Curse of the Crimson Butterfly
by SilverSiana
Summary: YuGiOh x Fatal Frame. Darkness descends on the city of Domino, the shrieking laughter is heard in the eternal night and from the crimson blaze in the forest emerges a long forgotten curse... Better if you haven't played the game!
1. Shadow in the Crimson Blaze

**Curse of the Crimson Butterfly**

**A YuGiOh fanfic by SilverSiana  
**

**Chapter 1 – Shadow in the Crimson Blaze**

_....crimson... butterfly..... _

The darkness came suddenly, but not silently. Though it was night, the simple comfort of the star-lit skies was at once overcome and shrouded by something much more dispiriting. It was suffocating. It dimmed the street lamps and clouded over the houses as the lights within began to flicker. All over the city, the people were roused by the sound of their crying children, frightened by the sudden darkness and somewhere, out in the deep night, a high-pitched, hysterical laughter echoed through the streets. The cry of this delirious banshee spread through the city, seeping into the dreams of the heavier sleepers and bringing them, as Yugi Motou was, sharply into reality.

He had expected to awaken in a nightmare; a stereotypical haunted house moment, where lightning crashed outside his window and a witch darted across the moon. But the sight of a black, moonless sky was far more disturbing than anything his imagination could have conjured and he stared up, out of his window, his heart pounding faster and faster as blindness overcame him. Then the laughter returned to his ear and he pulled his fruitless gaze from the window, leapt up and looked frantically around the room. After a few moments, he shook himself. It was only a bad dream. That was it. If he got back into bed and shut his eyes, he'll wake up in the morning and everything will be fine. Taking a deep breath, he walked back over to his bed and lay back down.

He was just pulling the covers back when a flash of red flickered out of the corner of his eye.

Sharply, he looked up. Darkness. Only darkness.

Yugi shook his head one last time as he sank back onto the pillow.

In the hallway, the next door along silently opened and Grandpa Motou peered out, looking this way and that before creeping out and along the corridor to the stairs. It was difficult, especially for a senior gentleman such as himself, but even his dimmed eyes could not mistake that there was something unnatural about this darkness and the atmosphere... it felt oddly familiar. Similar to a situation he had found himself in fifty years before.

Once he had groped his way into the lounge, he sat down on the sofa and reached for the remote control, thankfully still in its usual place, and switched on the TV. At once he was greeted with a storm of white noise and snow, even as he flicked through the channels. Eventually he gave up and sat for a long time with a contemplative scowl on his aged face and as he prepared to go back to bed, the TV suddenly sprang to life.

"_We apologise for that interruption. The local stations suffered from technical difficulties. This was due to an earthquake that occurred only moments ago in the lower region of Domino Forest, disrupting several pounds of dust and sand from the future sight of the Riverside Apartments and causing an ecological anomaly over the city. If you've just tuned in with us, the unusual black night, according to local scientists, has been caused..." _

"By something you're not saying," concluded Grandpa. "What are you hiding?"

* * *

On the edge of the forest, construction workers in high-visibility coats gathered around the dig-site, their work abandoned since the brief but violent quake that had sent such a profound chill through the air. They stared into the sky above the distant trees, to a bright red glow coming from somewhere in the middle of the vast forest and were so mesmerised by it, that they failed to see the trucks pull up behind them.

The engines died and several people jumped out: scientists and businessmen in suits, who at once approached the fluorescent yellow circle. The boss immediately went over to converse with his workers and the scientists walked to the edge of the site, watching with the others to the glow.

"Is there a fire?" one of them asked. The men turned in surprise at the new arrivals and shook their heads in response.

"It's too deep a red to be a blaze," said another scientist.

The other turned to him. "What do you think, Arthur?"

Professor Hawkins lifted his hand to his forehead and continued to stare with amazement at the light, though within his watery eyes, his colleague thought he could see a dark familiarity. "I can't be sure." He lowered his hand and shook his head hopelessly. "You said on the radio that you heard screaming?"

"Yeah, that's right," one of the workmen replied. "About fifteen minutes ago, not long after the quake. It stopped a little while ago, but we've contacted the warden to make sure no one got caught in the woods when it started."

"If there was someone out there, that would explain how that fire started. Might've had a car with 'em."

"That, gentlemen," said Hawkins, patiently. "Is not a fire. Though I am curious to find out what it originates from." He turned back to his colleagues. "What do you think? Take a drive out there?"

"We should wait, to make sure that there won't be an aftershock!"

Hawkins waved a hand. "The car is perfectly capable of handling it. Besides... I don't think there will be a repeat incident."

The smothering darkness heralded their entrance into the thick forest. The construction workers were creating a new row of apartments that would overlook the Domino River and command a view all the way to the estuary miles into the distance. At the start of the quake, the graveyard shift workers had called everyone within driving distance to help them with clearing up the mess that had been made, but most were eager for more company in the great black night and the distant cries resonating through the trees. Professor Hawkins and his colleagues stared through the black trees, their imaginations trying to overcome their logical minds and they started in shock when the red light flashed through the trees.

They all cried out, but the light suddenly vanished. Arthur Hawkins looked up and his eyes widened at what he saw.

For the most brief of moments, the car was parked on the edge of a cliff and through the dense trees, a small village was visible beneath them. Then it was gone, and with it, the crimson light.

"What was that?"

Arthur shook his head. "I'm not sure... But I think it would be wise to head back. There's nothing here."

They turned the jeep in a wide circle and began to drive back through the woods. A flicker of red caused Arthur to look back.

"Wait! Stop!"

The jeep pulled to a stop, the engine still running, and the scarlet rear lights caught the dark shape emerging from the trees. Frowning, Arthur climbed out of the back seat and approached it, his arm lifting sharply to catch the collapsing form.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Not a bad start eh? I wonder if it was a bad idea for me to leap into a new story right after finishing the last one, but I couldn't resist! I'm not going to order you around, but I just want to say that this story will be much more enjoyable if you have NOT played Fatal Frame/Project Zero 2, just because of the approach I want to use. At the least, you should forget you have played it. Please review and tell me if the opening chapter intrigues you enough to want to read on!

Also, to once more state the obvious: I do not own YuGiOh, Fatal Frame or any of the characters.


	2. The Girl and the Camera

**Chapter 2 – The girl with the camera**

"Okay! Joey's turn!"

Tristan laughed. "I gotta have a shot of this! I dare Joey to scarf the last six slices of pizza and then drink his soda in less than two minutes!"

Shaking his head, Joey smirked indulgently. "That's not a dare. Nowhere near as challengin' enough."

"No, that's just how Joey's always eats his dinner!" said Téa.

They all laughed. Everyone was staying around at Yugi's house for the night and Grandpa had ordered them all pizza and rented a few DVD's to keep them out of his way, whilst he dealt with a new delivery for his shop and tried to fix his phone. Ever since the earthquake the previous night, the phone lines had been out, but since the company assured the entire city that everything was now fully operational, Grandpa now had an evening ahead of him of frowning at his own stubborn contraption and wondering why it still refused to work. Yugi had never heard his grandfather curse, so he was surprised by the language he had managed to come up with whilst wrestling with the phone and screwdriver.

"I don't get why he doesn't just call a repairman," said Tristan.

"'Cause he's Grandpa," said Yugi, folding his hands behind his head. "He's about as likely to ask someone else to fix his phone than Joey is to share his pizza."

Joey, who had been stuffing his mouth and only heard the part about sharing food, hastily muffled "Not happening, bud!"

Yugi smirked and mentally, he could see Yami shaking his head, an equally broad grin on his face. [_We know him too well.]_

"So, have any of you finished your assignment for Monday?" Téa asked, glaring around the group as they all paled.

"Aw, come on, Téa! You're not gonna turn this into a homework session, are you?" moaned Tristan.

"Only if you force me to!"

_[Yugi.]_

_[I know, I sense it too.]_

Yugi slowly got to his feet. "Guys..."

"Hey! Don't change the subject! You're not getting out of it that easily!"

"No... I sense something..."

They all fell silent and Téa's defiant expression faded. "What is it?"

"I don't know," he said. "But... it feels like the same thing I felt last night too..."

He trailed off and they listened for several long moments.

Bang! They all jumped as the front door slammed shut downstairs. Joey released a long breath and Tristan and Téa laughed nervously. Yugi frowned as he saw Yami in his mind's eye, crossing to look out of the window.

_[It's Professor Hawkins.]_

"What's he doing here?"

Joey looked up, confused. "Who?"

Stepping over the open pizza box, Yugi opened the bedroom door and went down the stairs, closely followed by the others, who watched him with curiosity and fear as they made their way downstairs. The voices of Grandpa and Professor Hawkins drifted out from the shop towards them.

"... an absolute disgrace, Solomon! Wouldn't even let us clean her up before they whisked her off to the police station!"

"I imagine it didn't do them any good, anyway."

"Not a bit of it and that's the only reason why I managed to get her released."

"Well, she'll be fine here. We'll put her up for the night and keep an eye on her."

"Thank you, Solomon. I knew she'd be safe here."

Yugi frowned as he peered around the door of the shop. He didn't like to go out, since he was only wearing his pyjamas, but he could clearly see his Grandpa standing with his back to the door and the Professor, suited but weary, in the doorway, with his arm around what looked like a small black lump.

"What is it, Yuge?" Joey hissed. Grandpa heard them and looked around.

"Ah, Yugi! Perfect timing! Looks like we'll need to set up the spare room, we have another guest tonight!"

The professor smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry for disturbing you all, but I didn't know where else I could bring her." He motioned to the black figure and as it moved slightly, Yugi finally recognised the small form of a girl, wrapped in a heavy black coat and her face partially hidden by a long, dark fringe.

"Bring her in, Arthur." Grandpa motioned them all back into the living room as the Professor guided his charge in after them. She moved rather reluctantly and her legs, covered mostly with black leggings, trembled painfully as she walked, making every effort not to appear weak. In the stronger light of the lounge, Yugi was able to get a clearer look at her and was disturbed by what he saw. The girl's large brown eyes were vague and distant, though they shone brightly and alert, taking in her new surroundings as she clutched dependently to the coat around her shoulders. Her face was pale, too pale and her expression was strange, emotionless, yet as though she were about to burst into tears, but at the same time that she had shed tears too many. Yugi had never seen a face like hers: so defeated, so haunted.

"This is Mio," said Professor Hawkins. "And that's all I've managed to find out about her, since she doesn't talk very much. Hardly at all, really."

The gang stood, awestruck, equally alarmed by the frail state of the girl. "Where did she come from?" asked Téa, whispering as though afraid her voice might shatter the delicate state Mio was in.

"What's wrong with her?" asked Tristan. "It's like she..."

Arthur sighed. "It's a long story and I, for one, am extremely tired. I could do with a coffee... or something stronger."

"I've got just the ticket," said Grandpa, disappearing into the kitchen. Arthur sat down wearily on the couch, leaving the girl standing helplessly by herself. He looked up at her and then at Téa.

"I don't suppose you could run a bath for her, could you?" he asked. "She's could do with getting cleaned up, especially after what she's been through."

"Sure." Tentatively, she approached the girl, pausing only when she flinched and tried to back away, her brown eyes wide with fear. But Téa smiled and held out her hand. "It's okay. I won't bite. Do you want to come with me?"

Hesitating, the girl finally nodded and together the two girls went upstairs.

Yugi shook his head, imperceptible to anyone but Yami.

_[What happened to her?]_

_[I don't know, Yugi. It may not be wise to question Professor Hawkins now, though. Let him rest. He looks as exhausted as she did.]_

_[You're right.]_

"Yugi." He looked at Grandpa. "Will you go and help Téa? She may not know how the thermostat works."

"Okay."

Leaving Tristan and Joey to take seats opposite the Professor, Yugi climbed the stairs and sure enough, as soon as he reached the landing, Téa poked her head around the bathroom door. "Yugi, I can't get any hot water."

"You need to turn on the thermostat." He stood in front of the door. "Are you both decent?"

"Yeah, you can come in."

Yugi pushed open the door and saw that Mio's stance hadn't changed at all since Téa brought her upstairs. She still clung to the black shroud and her eyes still stared miserably at the floor. He stared at her for a few moments and then crossed to the boiler cupboard.

"It's in here," he said, turning up the temp meter and turning back as Téa muttered a quick thank you and then held up a hand to Mio.

"I'm just going to take your coat off, okay?" Gently, she tugged on the black cloth, pulling it out of the girl's grasp until she let go completely and Téa was able to pull it away.

The coat fell to the floor. "Yugi..."

"What is it?" He moved around to the front and had to fight to stop the horrified gasp escaping his throat. The girl's neck was plastered with thick blood and the flood of red that flashed before Yugi's eyes, the copper smell of the vital liquid flowing from the deep gash of her neck, filled him with horror and disgust before his prolonged stare began to make more sense of what he saw. The blood may have looked like a lot, but there was only a little, seeping from a small cut beneath her jawline and it ran in small rivers across her neck and collarbone. It had only looked like a lot more blood because of the fluorescent red mark underneath, criss-crossing her neck, and the red butterfly bow in the middle of the dipping neckline of her brown, laced top.

Sighing, Téa reached down and took a flannel from the side of the bath, damping it in the lukewarm water. "Let's get you cleaned up, alright?" Her hand stopping only once, she began to gently wipe away the blood. It shouldn't have taken her so long, but she went slowly, taking her time, afraid that any sudden movement, any pressure...

The slightest push might shatter the poor, fragile girl to pieces.

* * *

"We found her last night, after the earthquake," the Professor explained. "A group of my colleagues and I went up the Domino forest, where the construction site is located, to investigate the paranormal activity going on there."

"Paranormal activity?" Yugi asked.

"Didn't you see it last night?" They all stared at him blankly. "The unnatural darkness, the monstrous laughter echoing around the streets, the red light...?"

"Oh, wait, I saw a light!" said Joey. "But I assumed that was the street-lamp outside my building."

"No, the light was emanating from the forest. A pure, crimson red light, too dark to be the sunrise, too bright to be a forest fire. It's a light I've seen before."

Yugi looked up sharply. "Really? Where did you see it?"

"This was many years ago. I had been called to investigate some old ruins in an area known as the Forest of All Gods. I saw that light, one night, from my tent and I've never seen anything like it since. It was astounding, but at the same time, sinister. It wasn't until later on that I learned that the area was meant to be haunted."

"Okay!" They looked around as Téa came down the stairs, holding the bundle of the girl's clothes, and Mio followed close behind in a pair of thick blue pyjamas. "Good thing I brought spares," said Téa, handing the bundle over to Grandpa.

"How is she?"

"Still quite shaken." Tea looked curiously at Arthur. "What happened to her, professor?"

"We're not sure. We found her coming out of the trees, just after the red light disappeared."

Téa's eyes went wide. "From last night, you mean?"

"Yes. She was injured when we found her, but when we brought her back to camp, the police turned up. Most of them were cranky and trigger happy and they were quite content to arrest Mio when they found out she had come from the forest. Blamed her for starting the fire."

"But there was no fire!" shouted Joey.

"That's what we told them, but they weren't having any of it. They held Mio in the cells for hours and even tried to interrogate her, but it was no use. She's clearly traumatised."

Yugi looked at Mio sadly. "But by what?"

"Who knows..."

"Wait." Téa ran across to the laundry bin by the kitchen door, where Grandpa had dumped Mio's clothes and she pulled out a brown packet from inside. "She was carrying these."

The professor nodded. "The police confiscated them when they brought her in, with some difficulty, I might add. But they gave them back when they let her go."

Téa pulled out a couple of old fashioned devices. One was clearly a camera, though it was very old and had strange runes etched around the lens. The other device, none of them could figure out, no matter how long they stared at it, but the golden glowing window at the front made it feel all the more ominous. Mio's eyes went wide as Téa placed them on the table and she quickly grabbed up the camera, holding it protectively against her chest.

_Those look really old,_ Yugi thought.

_[Yes, and there is a strange aura emanating from them.]_

_[An aura?]_

_[I can't be sure, but... is something stirring inside them? I can hear voices... most of all from that camera.]_

Yugi looked up at the camera in Mio's hands and she suddenly held it up, her wide eyes staring at Yugi. He stopped. She looked terrified. Of him? What was she so frightened of? Slowly, she raised the camera to her eyes and

FLASH!

The light blinded him for a moment and he blinked hard. Joey laughed. "A souvenir of the King of Games!"

Yugi laughed as well. Perhaps she had just recognised him from the Duelling world, but as he tried to comfort himself with this thought, Yami's uneasiness broke through.

_[What is it?]_

_[The light from that camera... I could feel it. It reflected me for a moment.]_

_[What? But that's impossible!]_

_[That camera...]_

Arthur was also looking at the camera, frowning as he looked between Yugi and the old device, before he finally reached down to the other old piece of equipment. "Mio?" he asked gently, causing her to jump. "Could you show us what this does?"

Mio looked thoughtful for a moment and then sighed, reached down to the machine and pulled open the small drawer at the front. Téa gasped in delight as they saw the collection of rubies, emeralds and more precious jewels stashed inside and Mio pulled a bright blue crystal from the bottom of the pile and clicked it into place in the small gold window. Turning a dial on the front, a hiss of white noise filled the room.

"Oh, it's a radio!" said Joey, proudly, whilst the others looked at him exasperatedly.

Mio flicked a switch and a flow of light coursed through the little crystal and the white noise became louder. She turned up the volume. A small voice resonated behind the hisses and moans, a little girl, crying desperately, snatches of her voice bursting through the interference.

_"...no... don't wanna kill... didn't wanna kill anyone... let's stay together... I won't kill anymore... can't kill anyone anymore..."_

The radio went dead. They sat in stunned silence for a long time. Téa finally coughed and laughed nervously. "Suddenly not so beautiful, huh?"

Tristan shook his head. "What the hell was that?"

"I've heard about devices like these," said Arthur. "But I thought that they were just urban myth. Radios that can pick up messages from the spirits."

Yugi's voice finally came back and he tore his gaze away from the radio. "Message from the spirits?"

"I suppose this one works by placing a stone or an object that was once owned by a person into the radio and it transmits their thoughts of the time when they were alive." He looked up at the girl. "Am I right, Mio?"

She nodded slightly.

"So what does the camera do?" asked Joey.

They all stared, Mio holding it consciously close against her breast and Yugi felt Yami sharing a memory with him, a sensation of his own soul being captured, exposed by the flash of the camera.

"I'm not sure... but it could be..." Arthur cut himself off and sighed. "I should get going. I have a lot of work tomorrow and I still need to find out what happened in that forest."

He rose to his feet and the others followed, bidding him goodnight as he left to the shop, Grandpa following close behind.

Yugi sighed. The room was sitting in tense silence, everyone consciously aware of the mute girl standing before them, the spirit message still ringing in their ears.

_[There's a light there.]_

_[Yugi frowned at his other spirit. You mean the camera?]_

_[No, I mean on her neck.]_

Turning back, he looked curiously at Mio and saw to his surprise that Yami was right. A red light was shining from Mio's neck, right across her collarbone, but as he got to his feet, it faded into a unremarkable bruise.

"That mark on her neck..." he muttered. "It looks kind of like a butterfly."

Mio gasped and dropped the camera. They stared at each other, she in horror, he in confusion. He hadn't really thought about what he was saying, but it was true, the red streaks fanning out either side up and down her chest, the two tiny circles on her windpipe like antennae, looked remarkably like a little red butterfly in her pale skin. Yugi didn't know why he had said it, but it had had a strong affect on Mio, who looked almost ready to faint from the shock.

"Is it a bruise?" asked Téa. "How do you think she got it?"

"It looks more like a birth-mark," said Tristan.

Joey scoffed. "Who has a birth-mark like that?"

And they were off, arguing for much of the night, first about the mark, then the camera and it went on, leaving Yugi and Téa to show Mio up to the guest bedroom. Once they made sure she was comfortable, they returned downstairs to drag the squabbling boys back upstairs out Grandpa's way, since he still needed to fix his phone.

* * *

Yugi turned in his sleeping bag, groaning irritably as he pulled himself to his feet and stepped over Joey to get to the door.

As he was coming out of the bathroom, he passed the guest bedroom and stopped as he heard the rustling inside. Slowly, warily, he opened the door and peered in, seeing that Mio was tossing and turning in her bed, her eyes screwed tightly shut and her fists clenched either side of her as she thrashed around.

Yugi had no idea what to do. Instinct told him to go and wake her up, but he had read somewhere that that only makes it worse, and it was too late for him to wake his Grandpa or Téa. But before he could worry on it another moment, Yami took over and strode into the room, taking hold of the girls' flailing arms. He didn't make a sound, but holding Mio's hands down with one hand, he gently stroked her forehead, brushing her fringe from her feverish brow and after a few moments, she calmed down, falling into a deep slumber.

Sighing, he let Yugi take control again as he stood up.

_[Thanks.]_

_[Well, if it'd been left to you, you'd have been standing there all night.]_

_[I just panicked, okay!]_

_[I noticed. Now let's leave her be, she'll be alright now.]_

Yugi nodded and turned away from the bed.

_This thing is too dangerous... _

Frowning, Yugi looked at the beside table, where the old brown camera was sitting. A shiver ran down his spine as he stared at it, at the gold runes lining the lens that shimmered in the dim landing light, seeming to move of their own accord.

_[Did you hear that?]_

_[I did. It would be best to leave it alone.]_

Yugi wasn't convinced. In the bed, Mio was beginning to stir again, her brow furrowed as another nightmare set in and another deep, wordless murmur sounded from the camera. Shaking his head, Yugi reached out his hand

_[Yugi, don't!]_

and touched the cold device and

_"So, this is.... the Camera Obscura..."_

_Deep in the woods, a stone pillar, a shrine wrapped in ropes, sacred sutras hanging down all over it, the darkness, spying, not supposed to be here, but - _

_"It take pictures of impossible things..."_

_The old man wore an old-fashioned kimono and the camera, despite its age, looked odd in his hands as he lifted it up to his eyes, staring through the lens at the shrine. His finger hovering on the shutter, he continued to stare. _

_A sick grin. A thousand arms reaching out to grab him. _

_Gasping in horror, he brought the shutter down. A flash of light. He fell to the ground, dropping the camera beside him. _

_"What was that!?" _

_The shrine remained silent, ordinary, giving no answer. _

_But he had seen it. "I can't believe..." The arms, pale and desperate, so many of them stretching out, flailing and... "So it's true!" _

_This thing is too dangerous..._

Yugi sharply pulled his hand away, his eyes wide with shock.

_[Yugi! Are you alright?]_

Yugi drew in a long breath. _[Fine... just... What was that?]_

Yami sighed._ [I could feel something otherworldly about that camera. I could sense the evil coursing through it. You should not have touched it, Yugi. It could have absorbed you.]_

Yugi shook his head. _[I don't think it's designed to absorb me.]_

He spoke aloud, his voice sounding jarring in the prolonged silence. "The Camera Obscura... Where did Mio get something like this?"

* * *


	3. Mio

**Chapter 3 - Mio**

Something banged painfully against Yugi's head as he turned over and he groaned as the sharp aching pain spread through his cranium. It was dark, too dark to see, but after a few moments, he remembered he was on the floor in his sleeping bag beside the others and what he had just collided with was most likely the bedstead. Rubbing his bruised head, he turned back over, pulling the warm cover up to his chin.

"Yugi? Yugi!"

He groaned against whoever it was hissing at him and shaking his shoulder and he turned back, again forgetting about the bedstead.

"AH! Geez..."

"Yugi! Do you know what time it is?"

Squinting past his pain and the dark room, he made out the faint form of Téa and the shimmer of her eyes staring at him fearfully.

"Really late or really early?" he murmured.

"Neither. It's nine-thirty am."

That shook him out of his pain-induced daze. "What? But it's dark out!"

"That's my point!"

He got to his feet, ignoring the cry of protest as he accidentally stood on Joey's chest to get to the window. There weren't any curtains in his room, since the slant of his wall made it impossible for them to hang properly, so he just reached for the latch and flung it open. The dark night, or whatever the hell it was, was unnaturally still, but he could hear the shouts and sounds of people talking in the street below.

"Tristan! Joey! Wake up!"

"Aw, Téa, we'll do the assignment in the morning, 'kay?"

"It IS morning! Get up and take a look at this!"

Yugi shook his head in disbelief and looked up at the impenetrably black sky that showed no sign of relenting to the sunlight any time soon. The sensation spreading through the air and rippling down Yugi's spine was the same as two nights ago, when the earthquake struck...

"What's going on?"

* * *

It was still pitch black when Mio opened her eyes and at once, she looked for the camera. Sighing with relief as she saw it on the bedstand beside her, she cast her mind back to the previous evening, to that boy with the spiky hair...

Her heart pounded loudly in her ears as she thought about it, about what she had seen through the camera lens. That boy... was he like her?

Moaning against the pain in her bruised ribs, she pulled herself up to sitting. The many cuts and bruises she had gained over the last few days were finally making themselves known, now that she had stopped running at last. Trembling slightly at the memory of it all, her hand sought the red mark on her neck, but she pulled it sharply away again, as though it stung. Even though it was dark, her eyes had become accustomed to it and she got up from the bed, picking up the camera as she made her way to the door.

As she stood at the top of the stairs, however, she blinked in surprise when she saw that everyone was up, staring at the television in the corner.

"What the hell is this...?" muttered Joey as they all stared fearfully at the news report.

_"At this time, local scientists are unwilling to comment on the phenomena that has swept our city and can give no explanation to the sudden unwavering darkness that has lasted even to this late hour."_

Mio frowned and her eyes found the wall clock. It was almost eleven o'clock. Had she slept all day?

Téa looked up from the group and gave the girl a bright smile. "Good morning, Mio! How are you feeling today?"

Still frowning in confusion, she made her way slowly down the last few stairs. "Morning...?"

Tristan scoffed. "Yeah, you wouldn't believe it, would ya? We just woke up this morning and found out the sun hadn't."

"It's still really dark out there. You'd think it was still night, but it's almost midday."

"I should go and open the shop," said Grandpa, emerging from the kitchen. "Though I doubt anyone would want to go shopping on a day like this..."

Yugi gathered up his deck and looked up as Mio stood nervously next to him. She continued to stare strangely at him and clutched the camera protectively close to her chest.

"Mio... I wanted to ask. Where did you get that camera from?"

She lowered her eyes. "Found it."

Joey looked up. "What, just lying around?"

"Pretty much," she shrugged.

That was all she would say on the subject. Or on anything else for that matter.

By four o'clock that afternoon, it was still dark and the gang stayed at the shop, watching the news and trying to figure out what was going on. It couldn't be connected to the Shadow Realm, since Yugi could not sense its evil energy, but he and the Pharaoh could sense something equally sinister. The school had been closed because of the phenomena, so they tried to get on with their day as normally as possible. Hardly anyone came to the shop, except for a few of Grandpa's elderly friends getting the gossip and chatting about the day's strange events.

"It's put my parrot completely outta whack, let me tell ya!" one of them said, bitterly. "S'been asleep most of today, then when I settle down for my afternoon nap, it suddenly wakes up and starts squawking! It's not just animals freaking out either. Apparently the paramedics were called to Madison Street to get this guy to come out of his closet. He's sealed it up with masking tape and had been hiding in there since yesterday."

This strange story was confirmed by the news station later that day, along with another disturbing case: a man had disappeared, seen walking into his house, but his wife swears he never came home. It was as though he never arrived on the other side of his own front door.

"What is this?" said Téa, shaking her head. "I know people are freaking out about the darkness, but stories like that just blow it out of proportion..."

"What makes you think it's just stories?" asked Yami. He had taken over for a while, trying to sense what was causing these events. Though he was sure that the Shadow Realm wasn't directly related, he couldn't help but feel that it was somehow connected.

Téa opened her mouth to protest, but faltered and slumped back into her seat. "So you think that all of this is real, then?"

"I can't be sure that all of these stories are real, but there is definitely some truth behind them." His eyes narrowed. "This darkness cannot just have come to intimidate us. It has a purpose. But what is it?"

"Well, it hasn't done anything so far," said Joey airily.

"Apart from make people disappear," Tristan replied in a mocking tone.

"Two people!"

"That's still two more than the average number in Domino, sans creepy eternal night!"

"Don't say eternal!"

"Relax, Téa. Everythin' ll be back ta normal by tomorrow morning."

Yami closed his eyes for a moment, contemplating everything that had happened in the last few days and without meaning to, he found his eyes wandering Mio, who flinched as she met his gaze and gathered the camera up.

"Taken any more pictures?" he asked.

Mio scowled at him. "This isn't any ordinary camera. It must only used when you're in danger."

"In danger of what?"

"Them."

He frowned, but she lowered her eyes and refused to saw anything else. "Mio, you know you can trust us. If something is bothering you, it might help to tell someone about it."

"You, you mean?" She looked up at him again, her eyes strangely dark. "How can I be sure I can trust you? I don't even really know what you are?"

Yami's eyes widened at this last statement. He remembered the camera's flash that caught him even in spirit form. He remembered the feeling of being pulled towards it, even long after the shutter had come down and the way Mio had been staring at Yugi... but not at him. Just what had she seen in that camera?

"Hey, who wants a duel!" shouted Joey suddenly. "How 'bout you, Mio? Ever duel before?" The girl shook her head nervously. "Well, you can cheer from the sidelines with Tristan and Téa. Yugi! I'll take ya on now!"

Yami couldn't help smiling. He never could turn down a duel. They battled for several hours and by the time they finally finished, Tristan and Téa's voices were hoarse from shouting and even Mio had started to join in, quite reluctantly.

"Well, what did you think, Mio?" said Téa as the boys gathered up their decks. "Interested in Duel Monsters now?" Mio smiled and nodded.

Noticing how calm she had now become, Yami smiled to himself and switched with Yugi, a transformation almost imperceivable to anyone but his closest friends.

Mio saw it. Her smile vanished.

Yugi looked up and saw her terrified gaze again, inwardly groaning as he remembered the uneasiness the Pharaoh had felt about her. He leant forward, smiling encouragingly.

"If you want to learn how duel, Joey and I would love to teach you. We can even get you a starter pack."

Mio stared at him suspiciously for a few more moments and then a warm smile broke her cold demeanour. "Thanks."

After that she seemed to come out of herself more. She was more relaxed around the others, and though they were secretly hoping that they would find out something more about her, none of them pressured her, just glad to be able to talk and see her smile. Somehow, watching her, Yugi had the feeling that she hadn't smiled in a long time.

"Hey, Yugi! Anyone home!"

"Duke!" He ran out to the store, spotting Duke as he closed the door behind him. "How's it goin'?"

"Weird," he frowned. "I closed up shop today, because people seem to see the darkness as an excuse for looting."

"You're kidding!"

"Yeah, haven't you had any trouble?" Yugi shook his head. "That's lucky. Though I guess no one would bother with a little shop like this. No offence."

"None taken. You're just lucky Grandpa's not around."

"Actually, he is." They both jumped as the old man emerged from behind a shelf, carrying a pile of starter packs. "And the reason we haven't been looted, for your information, is because we actually opened today. They usually only target shops that are closed, meaning they can break more glass and do more damage."

"Touché. I should probably get back, on that note. Just checking that everyone was okay over here."

Yugi nodded. "We're fine. All the gang's here, so you're welcome to stay a while."

"Nah, I should head back and help out the old man. Oh!" He turned back at the door. "Heard the latest?"

"What?"

Duke nodded at the apprehensive tone in Yugi's voice. "I probably don't even need to tell you. Another person went missing an hour ago. This time he was walking across the park and eye-witnesses say he just vanished into thin air!"

"Say what!?"

Yugi turned sharply to see Joey, Tristan and Téa hovering in the doorway to the lounge, listening intently as Duke looked over. "Hey, guys!"

"Who was it that went missing?" asked Téa.

"I think the guys name was Ted Anderson, or some other name that sounds like he came out of Death of a Salesman." The bell chimed as he opened the door again. "Anyways, I better get back to my shop. See you all later!"

"See you..." Yugi turned to exchange a significant look with the gang and they ducked back into the lounge.

"So that brings the tally up to three."

"It'll all blow over tomorrow. That guy will turn up outside a bar, stoned up to his eyeballs."

"Nice you have faith in humanity, Joey."

"Mio?"

They all looked around at Yugi, who was staring at Mio. The girl's fragile smile had vanished and her face had become pale, her eyes wide and scared. She looked like she did when she was first brought in the night before, broken and terrified. Yugi leant down in front of her, but her eyes were clouded over and she didn't move as he waved his hand in front of her face.

"Mio? Can you hear me?"

Nothing. Then she slowly lifted her hands, steady and calm, up to the red mark. "The chosen children..." She carefully placed her fingers over the wings of the red mark. "... will be carried to heaven..." Her thumbs pressed against the two circles on her throat. "... on the wings of a butterfly..."

No one moved. No one spoke, except for the rasping mutter that issued from the dazed girl, then the laboured breathing.

Yugi gasped and grabbed her hands away.

Her eyes became bright again and she stared in confusion at Yugi's scared expression, at how he clenched her hands tightly away from her. She pulled her hands away, picked up the camera on the table and in a moment, she had disappeared upstairs.

"Mio...? What... just happened?"

"Well, I never heard of self-strangulation before," said Tristan with raised eyebrows. "That's a pretty unusual way to top yourself - AH!"

Téa hit him across the back of the head. "Will you stop it, you freak!? She wasn't trying to kill herself!"

"Well, she looked like she was giving a pretty good go of it, if ya ask me," sad Joey.

"But, why would she..."

Téa stopped and they all turned sharply to see the radio on the corner table. It began to hiss unevenly, crackling and surging and

_"... that will save this village..."

* * *

_Author's Note: Thanks for all the reviews. I'm putting up the links to some pictures of Mio on my profile if you want to check them out.


	4. Spiritual Assault

**Chapter 4 - Spiritual Assault **

Yugi grimaced as he opened the paper that morning. Three days had passed since the darkness first fell and still no one could explain where it had come from, though it had sparked panic in the city as more and more people were reported missing. Some were more than just mysterious, as many people were said to have just been walking harmlessly along before they vanished into thin air. The front page of that day's paper revealed that thirteen people had so far disappeared this way and no one was able to find them.

Sighing, he went back into the quiet shop. Grandpa had not bothered to open the last couple of days, claiming that no one would want to shop in a time of crisis and anyone who thought they would take it as a looting opportunity had to be joking. The old man had been in a terrible mood since yesterday, when he learned that his friend, the parrot-owning Mr. Anderson, who had come in just the day before to grumble with a familiar face, had also gone missing. Grandpa had sat silently in the kitchen most of the day, scowling at anyone who spoke to him. On top of that, the gang had gone home and despite the progress they had made, Mio still wasn't telling them anything about herself and was still behaving very coldly towards Yugi. With all this, plus the cursed darkness, the week hadn't exactly been fun.

He laid the newspaper on the coffee table and slumped down on the sofa. He looked up and jumped slightly when he saw Mio sitting across, glaring at him reproachfully. She was still wearing the pyjamas that Téa leant her, since her clothes were awaiting ironing in the laundry room, and she still managed to look formidable, even in powder blue. Yugi smiled inwardly as he watched her; he knew she was only putting up a front.

Ignoring her blatant stare, he grinned at her. "Mind if I switch the TV on?" She started slightly at his open manner and then gave a half-shrug. He picked up the remote and flicked the box on.

_"Our top story: Paranormal activity is rife on the streets of Domino today, as numerous reports of ghostly sightings have been flooding in from across the city. Police are treating the reports as the result of mass hysteria, not to be taken literally at the present... " _

"It's spreading..."

He turned to look at Mio. "Spreading? What is?"

She didn't answer, but the expression that furrowed her brow and pulled at her mouth was of fear and defiance. Her gaze drifted to the radio and for the umpteenth time in the last few days, it began to crackle.

Yugi knocked it with his knuckles and it silenced. That always worked. He figured it was picking up static interference or something...

But later that afternoon, they heard more news that quashed that theory.

_"All telecommunications in and out of Domino city have ceased. Radio and internet are down, as are local phone lines..." _

"WHAT!?"

The gang were all at the shop again, eager not to be outside each other's company after what they had just heard. Mio, too, sat among them, finally dressed in her own clothes and holding the camera like a comfort blanket.

"What the hell do they mean, communications are down!?" shouted Joey.

"The darkness must be blocking the radio waves," said Téa.

Tristan shook his head. "And what about the underground cables, what's stopping them!?"

"The earthquake?"

"It was workin' fine yesterday! The earthquake was days ago!"

"Joey's right! Something else must have happened!"

_"And for anyone planning on making any trips in the next few days, I'd push it back til next week, as the city is under temporary quarantine, until authorities can discover the cause of this strange phenomena..." _

"They've trapped us in our own city?"

"It makes it sound like we're sick or something!"

"You don't think... maybe we are sick? That this is all just a big hallucination?"

Yugi frowned at Téa's suggestion, but the other two were quick to dismiss it, calling her crazy.

"Well, it doesn't sound as crazy as being trapped in a city, completely cut off from the outside world with no daylight! Does it!"

They fell silent at her angry outburst. What could they say? It was crazy, but it was happening. And crazy stuff like this always happened to them, so this couldn't be unconnected.

"Yugi?" He jumped as his grandfather looked around from the kitchen door, his tone unusually civil. "I'm sure the mart's still open, even during this. Would you go and fetch a few things?"

"Sure, Gramps," he answered, getting to his feet.

"Want us to come with?"

"Nah, I'll be fine. It's just a few blocks away and it is technically still daytime... almost."

"You sure?"

Yugi smiled. "I'll be fine, Téa. Trust me."

She still didn't look sure. Their friendship was only a few years old, but she knew him well enough to know he was a nervous person on his own, unless he was truly fighting with all his heart, but where was their call for that today? She would feel better if someone were with him. Anyone.

She suddenly gasped. "Mio! You're looking a little pale, you know. You should get some fresh air." And before Mio could open her mouth in protest, Téa had dragged the poor girl to her feet. "Can Mio tag along, Yugi? Great!" She shouted, before either of them could answer. "See you both later!"

Yugi stared across at Mio and a nervous laugh escaped him. She continued to scowl and then some dark understanding flitted across her eyes as she glanced at the camera in her hands.

"Fine, I'll come."

"You sure?"

She nodded. Yugi stared for a few moments and then took the list from his grandfather and the two of them left through the shop door.

The boys looked around at Téa as they heard the bell. "Why'd you make him take Mio along?"

She sighed. "Yugi is stubborn, but no one likes being alone at times like this. Also..." She looked up at them knowingly. "I think Mio is scared of Yugi."

"Scared of Yugi!?"

"Yeah. I can't tell why, but she should know that he's nothing to be so afraid of. The opposite, actually."

"You think they'll be okay?"

"Well... that's an added incentive," said Téa. "If Mio is with him, he'll have a reason to fight if the need calls for it."

Joey smirked. "Yeah, cause we all know Yugi would do anything for anybody, even fight for 'em!"

"Amen to that," said Tristan. "I just hope that there's no cause for it this time."

* * *

They barely spoke the whole way to the mart and it was only on the way back that Yugi attempted to strike up a conversation with her, but it proved difficult: what was there to talk about? The weather was always a retarded subject, but never more so than then, when there hadn't been so much as a gust in days. And anyway, his mind was mostly elsewhere, back with the suggestion Téa had made in the shop.

What if this was just a hallucination? What if none of this was really happening and there was really daylight and the city was safe. Somehow, though it sounded like a ridiculous idea, he wanted to believe it, wanted to believe that the piercing darkness and the spine-chilling cold were all in his mind. But the nervous look in Mio's eyes as she peered through the surrounding darkness were enough to convince him it was all real. The Pharaoh's reassurances did little to help either. After all, if the Shadow Realm wasn't causing this, what was? Something unfamiliar, something they hadn't faced before.

A new enemy?

"What are you?"

Yugi almost leapt a foot in the air as Mio's demanding voice rang through the silence. She had stopped in the middle of the path, watching Yugi calmly.

"What.. do you mean, 'what am I'? You implying I'm not human?"

"Maybe. I don't... really know what to believe. You might be like them... or you might be possessed."

"Possessed!?"

"I saw it!" She held up the camera. "This showed me, though I could see it without the camera's help! I can see it now! You have another spirit! Does that mean you're merged, or is it controlling you? Which is it?"

Yugi blanched with shock. "The camera showed you that?"

"You didn't answer my question!"

There was a long silence, then Yugi shook his head. "You don't have to be afraid. The Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle is my close friend and we work together. We do merge spirits sometimes because of that, but you still trust him. You can trust us."

When he saw how she had calmed down, he took a steps towards her. "Mio... Where did you come from? What have you seen?" She didn't answer. "It was the Pharaoh who told you that you could talk to us if something is worrying you and you can. We'll help you. Now... tell us what happened." She closed her eyes and as she lowered her head, he recognised the defeated stance she had held on the first night he met her. "Please?"

Slowly, she nodded and looked up.

And gasped in horror.

Yugi froze. Her wide brown eyes were staring with sheer terror over his shoulder and for several moments, he daren't move. Then, as Mio's scared whimpering reached his ear, he slowly turned around.

_....crimson..._

A girl was standing there, facing away from them. For one horrible moment, he thought she had no head, but then he saw that her short, jet-black hair blended almost perfectly with the surrounding darkness. She was wearing a pure white kimono and standing still, apparently watching the luminous red glow flitting in and out of sight ahead of her.

"Mio?" He turned back to the shell-shocked girl. "It's okay. I'm here. Tell me what's wrong. Mio? Do you know that person?"

"S-S-S -" She was gasping, trying to breathe, but her breathe was pulled from her terrified gaze as she continued to stare at the girl in white. Yugi couldn't understand it, but somehow the girl's appearance had terrified Mio.

_[Yugi! Be careful!]_

He looked back, but the girl had gone. Only the red light remained, drifting playfully up and down.

_[What was that?]_

_[I'm not sure.]_

_[Well, Mio seemed to know! We should check it out!]_

The Pharaoh sighed. _[Alright. But let me take over.]_

_[Sure. Just be careful with Mio, she's still not used to us.]_

_[I don't think anything could frighten her as badly as that just did.]_

Yami's eyes opened and he seized Mio's wrist. "Stay close." And with that, they took off down the street after the light.

_[What did I just say about not making her nervous?]_

_[There's no time.] _He was right. The shimmering red light was darting further and further away along the street and Yami kept a tight grip on Mio's trembling wrist, determined not to lose it.

They turned a corner and the light faded.

"Great," he sighed. Mio pulled her hand from his grasp. "I'm sorry, but I was concerned for you." He looked at her sincerely. "What happened back there? Seeing that girl had a profound effect on you. Why?"

But Mio's wide stare had returned, though somewhat less fearful than before, and Yami sharply turned around. A man was crawling out of the bushes and Yami had to fight Yugi's instinct to help him up when he saw what was wrong. The man had a deep gash across his face that was bleeding profusely and he looked disoriented as he staggered to his feet.

_[What are you doing!? That's Grandpa's friend! We have to help him!]_

_[Yugi! Calm down and tell me what you sense!]_

The young boy's spirit stared at the injured man and realisation hit him like a cold wave. The same dark energy that swept through him the night of the earthquake was emanating from that man's soul, which was stronger and more prominent for some reason...

_[Yugi... that man is not alive.]_

_[WHAT!]_

But it was true. The man was ghostly white and shimmered in and out of sight, incorporeal, the bushes protruding right through his arms and chest. Everything he did was in painfully slow motion and he seemed to move without walking, his face fixed in an expression of eternal agony, his lips soaked in the blood that poured from his wound.

An otherworldly moan escaped his lips and he lunged forward at Yami.

"Back!" the Pharaoh shouted, the Millennium symbol shining on his forehead as he forced the spirit back. It fell back to its knees, the deathly moans still bursting from his open mouth in impossibly quick succession. It was as though his soul itself were screaming. "Tell me why you have returned to this plane of existence! Why has your soul not moved on?"

He cowered on the ground and Yami felt pity for him, moving forward a few steps. It was waiting and threw itself at his feet, trying desperately to pull him to the ground.

There was a bright flash of light and the spirit screamed in pain so far unheard and a wave of bright blue swept through him, becoming sparks that fled his body, shooting off somewhere behind Yami.

He turned and saw Mio, holding her camera to her eyes, pointing it straight at the spirit as the lens absorbed the sparks that had been sucked from his body. Yami, too, had to struggle for a moment to keep his own soul in Yugi's body, but as strong as the flash of the camera was, he was much stronger. The spirit, however, was not faring so well. He released Yami's foot and shrank back.

Mio stepped up to it. Waited. Flash!

Another eruption of sparks was absorbed into the camera and the spirit became pale, collapsed soundlessly to the ground and faded into nothing.

Yami stared in disbelief at the place where it had lain for several moments and then rounded on Mio. She flinched but stared defiantly at him.

"Where did you learn how to use that camera? Where did you get it?"

"I already told you, I found it..."

"That's not an explanation! That thing is extremely dangerous, something one does not just 'find'!"

"This dangerous thing just saved you! I know how to use it, I know how to defend myself!"

Yami sighed, pressing the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "I think we should show that camera to Professor Hawkins. He might be able to tell us where it came from and how it is used..."

"I already know all of that!"

"Then why won't you tell us?"

Mio opened her mouth, but her words failed her. She gulped, her eyes shining and turned angrily away from him.

_[She looks pretty shaken up.]_

_[A agree. Perhaps you should take over again. She seems to trust you more.]_

Mio pulled away from the warm hand that rested on her shoulder, but stopped when she saw Yugi's eyes looking back at her. "Let's get back to the shop. Grandpa's probably worried."

She nodded. Yugi took hold of her hand and led her back along the street.

_Are you leaving me again...? _

Frowning, he looked across at Mio, trying to see what had made her suddenly clutch his hand so tightly. She was pale and scared again, as scared as she was when they had seen the girl in the white kimono.

* * *

_"Is this your idea of a joke, kid?"_

Yugi shook his head incredulously. The police officer was being obnoxious, perhaps annoyed by the number of phone calls he had already received. But that was irrelevant to Yugi; he had a genuine case to report.

"Listen, I saw the missing person Geoffrey Anderson on the park two blocks down from the mart! He looked like... like he was hurt."

The officer's irritated sigh reverberated down the phone line. Yugi turned to share a look with the others sitting in the lounge, when the officer came back on. "Look, kid. I don't know who you saw on the park, but it wasn't Anderson. We already found that guy."

"You did? Where?"

"Curled up inside his own wardrobe, six knife wounds across his neck and chest. I shouldn't really be telling you this, but the media's in disarray, much like everything else in this crazy city. Now, if you don't mind, I have a Beef Stroganoff waiting in the microwave that's been there for three hours and it won't wait any longer. Go waste someone else's time."

"And a very good evening to you too..." He slammed the phone down. "Asshole."

"Language," smirked Arthur. He had dropped in on his way to the lab for a glass of whiskey and some gossip. He had been interested to hear what Yugi and Mio had seen on the park and even more interested to hear about the powers of her camera, though a dark look came over his face when he heard that it had apparently captured the spirit's energy.

"Mio, you have to tell us where you came from. Where do you live? What about your family?" Mio's eyes grew wide at this and she bit on the inside of her lip. "Alright, then... What's your last name? You can tell us that at least, can't you?" Still no answer. Her face was pale and expressionless, as though she was trying to dam a great flood that might be released if she told the truth.

Arthur sighed. "Alright, then. You don't have to tell us." He pulled a small digital camera out of his pocket. "See? I have my own! It doesn't suck up ghosts, I know, but it will help the police to help identify you."

It didn't take much to convince Mio to let him take a few pictures and with a little more persuasion, he took some fingerprints from her. "This should help. I'll take these to the police station and see if they can't ID her from what I've obtained.

"There, see?" Yugi smiled encouragingly at Mio. "You don't have to worry anymore." Still, she seemed to be struggling with something.

"Well, I'd best be off," said Arthur, pulling his coat on. "I might stop by on Wednesday, Solomon! With any luck, things might be starting to get back to normal around here. My flight back home has already been cancelled twice and if I miss another -"

"Wait!"

He looked back as he reached the door and Mio ran up to him, holding out her hands. They were filled with small square cards, black, blue, green and a number of other colours. "Would you... please get these developed for me? If you can..."

Arthur frowned as he took them. "These are very old films. But I'll be able to do it. I'm interested to see what other pictures you've taken with that camera!"

_So am I,_ thought Yugi.

* * *

Author's Note: Pay attention now! Next chapter will be a massive turning point!

Keep r&r ing! xx


	5. Laughter in the Forest

**Chapter 5 - Laughter in the Forest **

"And there goes another one," sighed Joey as they passed another banner. The newspapers and broadcasting networks were no longer working in the city, so news was being spread by word of mouth and being displayed by local shopkeepers on large banners across their houses. The one they had just passed read: "Total number of missing / dead - 24"

"So another one went missing this morning," said Yugi. "When will this end?"

But he thought he already knew the answer. The winds, that had been absent the last few days had suddenly picked up and tore at their coats as they walked through Domino on the way back from town. No one dared to go out by themselves anymore, terrified that they would be the next to go missing, and doors and windows in every shop and home were shut and bolted, allowing admittance only to the nearest and dearest. Domino was quickly becoming a ghost town and everyone was in fear of their lives.

Even more terrifying was the news they had heard that morning.

"The media were lying."

Yugi raised his eyebrows at his grandfather. "Is that so much of a surprise?"

The old man remained deadly serious. "We're not under quarantine by the authorities."

"What?" Tristan looked up from his magazine. "Of course we are! The roads have been closed off, no one can leave town."

"The roads haven't been closed. They've disappeared."

"Hold on," Joey said, standing up from the sofa. "What do you mean 'disappeared'?"

"As in they simply aren't there any more. There's only the darkness and no one can pass it."

"Has anyone tried?" Yugi asked.

"What do you think happened to the man who went missing yesterday afternoon?"

They all stared at him open-mouthed. So they truly were trapped in the city.

"Why is this happening?" asked Téa as they walked on. "Why now?"

"Cause some bastard up there decided we shouldn't have a peaceful life," huffed Tristan.

"Yeah, seriously. This kind of weird stuff always happens to us."

"Be nice to have a break, though," said Yugi.

They all nodded appreciatively and walked on in silence, clutching at their collars to keep the wind out of their faces, though it pierced the thin cloth right to the bone. Yugi shrugged his shoulders, trying to shake some feeling back into his numb body and he looked up to the street ahead.

"Mio?"

They looked up sharply, but there was nothing there. "What's up, Yuge?"

"I just saw Mio..."

"Really? What's she doing out here by herself?" asked Téa.

Yugi shook his head. "Maybe I imagined it... No! There!"

The others frowned as they followed his wide-eyes gaze up the street, but shook their heads in confusion. Yugi knew she was there, her black hair and brown clothing lit up from the light of the red shimmer drifting just ahead...

Gasping, he took off in a run down the street. His friends called after him, but he didn't stop. Mio was getting further and further away, walking, as though in a trance, following the light. What was she doing out here alone? It wasn't safe?

But that light...

He remembered what happened two days ago, when a light like that appeared with the white kimono girl. She had acted so afraid of it all; the light, the girl, the spirits. What had changed?

"Mio! Wait!"

She didn't slow down and as the cold wind blew against his face, she shimmered in and out of the darkness as his eyes teared up. He was getting closer now, since she was walking quite slow and seemed to be struggling with her right leg -

She turned the corner quite sharply and Yugi had to draw to a halt as he almost ran past it. Pulling himself back up, he looked around the corner.

_You're not... like me?_

Nothing. The street was completely empty; Mio and the light had vanished.

"Yugi!"

He spun around as Joey and Tristan caught him up, Téa following a little further behind. "Did you see Mio?"

"Well, she was here, but then she just..." He shook his head in disbelief.

The boys exchanged a worried look. "You... sure you weren't seeing things?"

"I wasn't! She was definitely there!"

"But what would she be doing out here? She doesn't know this town and she wouldn't be stupid enough to go out alone."

"Téa's got a point, Yuge. We'll get back to the shop and she'll be waiting there for us, you'll see."

"It was probably just your eyes playing tricks on you, man. After what happened to you the other night, who could blame it, huh?"

"But..." Yugi looked back down the street, his wide eyes burning with the cold as they stared into the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of the fluorescent red light again. "I know I saw her..."

* * *

"Grandpa! We're home!"

The old man looked around the kitchen door. "Any trouble?"

"Nope!" Joey answered. "Just a boring old walk. Didn't even see any dead people."

"No, just a couple of morons who need to grow up!" Téa shouted.

Yugi tossed his bag on the sofa, beside the old camera, and looked up to see Mio sitting in the corner. She was kneeling on the floor looking at something and as he got closer, he saw that she was playing with her radio, trying different stones and crystals in the window and turning the knobs to try and get sound. For some reason, it wasn't working today.

"Hey, Mio? Why did you go out? Mio!" She snapped out of her concentrated task and looked at him confusedly. "Why were you out in the street earlier?"

She frowned. "I wasn't. I've been here all day, trying to get this to work."

"But, I-I thought..." he stammered and then turned to the kitchen. "Hey, Grandpa! Was Mio out today?" He ignored the insulted gasp from behind him. He could apologise to Mio later.

"No, she's been in the house all day. I wouldn't let her out by herself. Why?"

The others looked at him in a 'told you so' attitude and he sighed, relenting as he flopped down on the sofa.

_[We definitely saw her, right?] No answer. [Yami?]_

_[It's not what I saw that was worrying. It's what I sensed. It was as though the darkness itself was flowing through the air towards her. But... that girl was most certainly Mio. There can be no doubt about that.]_

_[So why is she lying?] _

"Still can't get your radio working, Mio?" Tristan asked, stepping up to her. "Want me to take a look?"

"And what would you do, Tristan? You're idea of fixing somethin' is hitting it!"

"Better than just losing your temper and tossing it against the wall, Wheeler!"

"That was one time and that TV was asking for it!"

"Oh, I'm sure -!"

"Guys! Will you shut up and sit down!" Téa sighed as the grumbling boys sat down beside Yugi. "Don't you think you should give it a rest too, Mio? You've been working on it all morning."

Mio shook her head. "I can't figure out what's wrong! The radio's fine, but the stones are being rejected. None of them will work at all!"

"What, none of them? You have dozens of those little stones, have you tried them all?"

"Yes! Well..." She hesitated and then reached around her neck. Frowning to herself, she gently pulled a long piece of string out from beneath her top and on the end was a spiralling red charm, like a snail shell that jutted out at the end. She stared at it for several long moments.

"Does that go in the radio too?" Yugi asked. That seemed to jolt her out of her reverie and she quickly inserted it into the window. Her hand hovered over the dial and then she turned it up.

At once, white noise filled the room. Then laughter.

Yugi's eyes widened. The loud, hysterical laughter issuing from the speakers... it was the same as that night.

"What... is...?" Téa only dared to whisper. The laughter suddenly got louder, more wild. Then it paused and broke into an insane scream.

"Switch it off!" Joey shouted. Everyone blocked their ears as Mio struggled with the dial, but nothing worked.

"It's outside too!"

They all looked around at Grandpa, who had just come in from the shop. "It's out in the street! A woman's laughter!"

They all jumped up, eager to be away from the ear-splitting screams, but they were soon listening to the wild shrieks again when they reached the front door. The laughter was echoing up the street and people were ducking back inside their houses, peering out of the dark windows.

"What's that!?"

Yugi followed Téa's pointed hand and saw the red light appearing above the houses. It came slowly and remained shining with scarlet ferocity in the dark sky.

"Is it the sun?"

Tristan shook his head. "It's too red!"

"It's not a fire, either..." Yugi watched it in amazement. "Is it the same as that night...?"

The horizon was now glowing crimson and small shining dots kept flitting in and out of the curtain that spread itself across the sky, like some obscured aurora. They barely noticed that the laughter had begun to fade.

"Guys!" Joey ran to the doorway of the shop, his eyes wide with fear. "That radio's goin' nuts again!"

A long whine heralded them as they entered into the lounge, their eyes squinting against the painful noises the radio was hissing at them. The laughter had stopped, though the curling red charm still sat in the gold window, pulses of light surging through it.

"Can't we turn it off?"

Yugi leant down to the dial, but a burst of white noise erupted in his head, along with the image of a white kimono and a girl chasing a butterfly.

"Mio?"

His head throbbed and he pressed his hands against his temples as the radio became louder.

_".....Mio.... come back.... the ritual.... born for this... destiny... no... dark.... so strong... can't..." _

Yugi's eyes were wide as the voice faded into white noise and the woman's laughter out in the street reached them again. He shook his head. "Mio, what did that mean? Mio?"

But she was gone. As Yugi heard the shop bell angrily ring out, he saw the empty space on the sofa where the camera had sat.

Everything seemed to be going in slow motion. His ears seemed filled with cloth and nothing seemed to register properly; not his friends shouts, not the laughter, not the voices pouring out of the radio. Before he knew it, he was running down the street and there, just ahead of him with several red lights, was Mio.

"Mio! Where are you going!? Come back!"

_Come back... _

The houses passed by in a blur. Yugi's chest was about to burst, his lungs on fire. Mio was surprisingly fast, even though she was carrying that camera.

_...don't leave me... _

"Mio!" Yugi gasped. "Stop running! It's not safe!"

He didn't even know why he was running after her so fast, so urgently. Somehow, he felt in his gut that something was terribly wrong. Something... something was about to happen!

Ignoring the calls behind her, Mio continued to sprint through Domino, the houses passing out of existence as she reached the boundary of the forest. The light was emanating from the tops of the trees. So, it was in there.

The voices were getting louder and louder in her head.

_...don't leave me behind... _

_"I won't! We're together! I'm coming, Mayu! We'll finish this together!"_

Yugi continued to follow her, even as she disappeared into the forest. As soon as he passed through the trees, the world became distant and began to spin. Nausea sweeping over him, he reached out to steady himself and looked up again, scanning around for Mio. There she was! He ran, desperate to catch up with her, arguing furiously with the unwanted voice in the back of his mind, that belonged neither to him or the Pharaoh.

She's a stranger.

But she's still our friend.

She doesn't even trust you.

That doesn't matter! She still needs us!

She's running away from you.

She's afraid! Something's wrong!

Something's very wrong.

_[She's running straight into danger. And I fear that it wants her drawn to it.]_

_[Then we have to stop it! We have to help her!]_

_[We're getting closer... the core of the darkness...]_

Yugi burst through the trees and gasped as he teetered on the edge of a cliff. Pulling himself away, struggling to regain his balance, he stared down into the dark abyss. It was pitch black and the bottom was nowhere in sight. Slowly, Yugi lowered himself to his knees on the edge of the cliff, his stomach doing backflips, and his trembling hand found a rock that he tossed over the edge. It fell out of sight, but there was no sound of landing in the still silence of the night.

As he pulled himself away, Yugi looked up and down the cliff edge. Where did she go?

Then a red light flashed in front of him.

He gasped in amazement. He had never seen one this close before, but he could see in its bright glow the gentle wings of a butterfly, fluttering in front of his face. There was something strange, ethereal about it and as he reached out to touch it, it darted away and fled away.

"There!"

Yugi got to his feet as he watched her, standing on the very edge, looking down into the darkness with almost mesmeric determination, despite the fear clouding behind her brown eyes. Floating around her were several butterflies, lighting the forest floor with their glow.

"Mio..." Yugi carefully stepped towards her, his hand outstretched. "Come away from there, it's not safe." She didn't move. "Mio? What did you see, what made you run out here?"

She sighed. "You've been asking a lot of questions since I met you, haven't you?"

His eyes went wide. "Yes. And you've given me no answers. Why, Mio? What are you so afraid of?"

Taking a shuddering breath, her face suddenly contorted with pain, misery and despair. "I don't want you... to know... So, please... don't follow me."

_Don't leave me alone..._

The white kimono. The woman with her back turned away to them, her pale hands hiding her face.

"Mio, I wanna help you."

"You can't. I can't be saved. Just forget about me. I can get rid of the darkness alone."

"The darkness? What does that have to do with you?"

Mio's expression became fixed, her sadness fading away. The mark on her neck was glowing so brightly, it looked almost like a real butterfly, just like the ones hovering around her. It even shimmered and he half expected it to flutter off her any moment now.

"Everything."

Yugi shook his head and looked back to the white kimono girl. "Mio... who is she?"

No answer. Her eyes went wide as she realised he was looking over her shoulder. Yugi's heart leapt. She hadn't realised. Slowly, fearfully, Mio turned her head as the girl lifted her head from her hands.

_Are you leaving me again? _

She gasped in horror, stepping away. A rustling of earth, her foot slipped, a wide look of fear.

And she fell from the cliff.

Without thinking, Yugi threw himself down after her. Everything was still and quiet. Too quiet. As they fell through the darkness, Yugi felt it was wrong for the world to be so still as they prepared to meet their maker.

He reached down to Mio's outstretched hand. The red mark was fluttering.

_Didn't we always promise each other... _

Pulling her close to his chest, Yugi braced himself for the impact.

_... that we would always be together?

* * *

  
_


	6. Following the Crimson Light

**Chapter 6 - Following the Crimson Light**

The cold pierced his clothing, but he paid no mind to it, drawn into the calming darkness and the sense that nothing existed but him. He wanted to sleep, didn't want anyone to disturb his dream...

_[Yugi! Wake up!]_

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes, frowning as he found himself staring at the shimmering surface of water, catching whatever dim light was penetrating the black night. Something blue was sitting beside him and he raised his head to see Yami's spirit looking down at him with concern.

"Whassup?"

Yami had to fight back a laugh. "You fell off the cliff, remember?"

A pause. Then Yugi sat up sharply. "Mio!"

As the water splashed around him, he realised he was sitting in a puddle and crawled out onto dry ground, struggling to get to his numb feet. Looking up, he saw nothing but trees, silent guardians of the clearing where he sat, and the red light that had shone in the sky had vanished, leaving only the darkness.

"Where's Mio? Did you see her?"

"No. We were alone when I woke up."

They looked around, trying to peer through the trees. "I hope she's okay..."

Yami frowned, staring through the trees, sensing a dark presence growing stronger on the other side.

Yugi sighed as he finally got to his feet and began to make his way across the clearing. "I don't know how long we were out for. Let's hope she hasn't gone far -" He stopped sharply as his foot sunk suddenly and he cried out in shock. "Dammit!" He pulled at his leg. "I'm stuck!"

Yami stepped in front of him and looked down at his trapped foot. "A sunken tree root," he commented. "This place is very old..."

"Yeah, yeah, just give me a hand!"

Stooping down to help him, Yami suddenly stopped. _[Yugi, look.]_

Turning as much as he could against his foot, Yugi looked behind him to the back of the clearing. Mio was standing there, watching him, her black fringe overshadowing her eyes.

"Mio! I'm glad you're alright!" He turned back to tug at his leg. "Could you give me a hand? I got... my foot caught on a tree root. Pretty lame, huh? Mio?"

He looked back to see that the girl hadn't moved. She was standing as still as a statue and Yugi thought she looked unusually pale, even for her. Her eyes stared down at the ground and didn't meet his worried gaze. "Mio? Are you okay?"

Turning away from her, she walked out of the clearing into the trees, limping heavily on her right leg.

"Mio! Wait! It's dangerous!" Yugi turned in frustration. Why did she still insist on running off alone? Pulling with renewed strength, he managed to release his foot and staggered backwards as he ran off to follow her.

The trees were so dense, but he could still see her through the trees, her arms stiff as she fought to keep her balance on her injured leg. Did she hurt it falling down the cliff? She must have done. Yugi felt a pang of guilt. How long had she been lying with a hurt leg while he was catching Zs? He was still thinking this when he tripped and fell face first onto the forest floor. Groaning in pain, he raised his head and almost jumped out of his skin. He was staring at a wide stone, no higher than his knee, decorated with the image of two people, tied together at the waist by a sweeping sash. The strange thing was, whilst one of them was happy and smiling, the other had no head at all...

Mio! He pulled himself back up and ran past the stone. As he did, the whole forest seemed to get darker, colder...

At last, he found a path through the trees and he followed it up a hill, stopping when he saw the gate. It was red, a Japanese entrance gate onto a set of steps and at the very top, a red light was gently glowing. Without hesitating, Yugi passed underneath the gate.

_I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry..._

He stopped, but as he turned back, the voice stopped and the path was still empty. So who had spoken?

"Mio? Are you there?" Nothing. Silence. He turned back and followed the steps to the very top and was surprised when he saw the great clearing before him. Five stone columns, shaped as though they were hewn straight out of the side of a mountain, shaped a pentagram around a stone table, joined to each other by ropes from which worn and dirty sacred sutras were dangling.

He froze. He had seen this before...

On the other side of the clearing, looking over the edge of the cliff, he saw her. He sighed with relief as he walked up to her, conscious suddenly of the pain in his left foot where it had been caught.

"Mio, there you are! Are you okay? Did you hurt your leg?" No answer. She continued to stare into the distance, her back to him. "Mio?"

She turned. A tumult of shimmering red butterflies flew up around her and as they fluttered off, disappearing into the trees, she stared at him sadly. Then, she turned her head slightly towards the cliff edge and Yugi, hesitating for a moment, stepped forward. Beneath him were a number of houses, a path in the clearing leading down to it. Some of them looked dilapidated, worn beyond repair, even though numerous lights were shining in the windows and on the pathways and far over in the distance was the dark shape of a great manor.

"Where is this?" he whispered.

"The Lost Village..."

He stared for several long moments before her words sunk in and he turned back to her. "What do you mean?"

But she had vanished.

Yugi gasped, stepping towards the place where she had stood not a moment before. That was when he heard it. Turning back towards the cliff, he strained to hear it more clearly, the low chanting that arose from somewhere in the village.

"What do you think?" he said, as the Pharaoh's spirit reappeared. "Go back to the cliff and try and raise the alarm... or go down there and check it out?"

"Mio may have gone there."

Yugi sighed. "I know. But do you think anyone else is down there?"

"Only one way to find out..."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Let's go then!"

Trudging down the path seemed to take a decade and the whole time, Yugi kept staring at the village, at the collapsing houses becoming closer. The chanting had stopped, and not even the sound of crickets or rustling branches broke the unnatural silence, where even his breathing sounded out of place and unwelcome. Despite the lit lanterns and occasional burning torch they saw on the way down the path, Yugi found it hard to believe that anyone lived here any more.

So when he stepped off the path and saw a woman's silhouette, his heart almost left his chest.

His mouth hung open for a moment and it took him everything to gather his courage and shout to her. "Hey! Wait!"

She had already gone. As Yugi ran around the corner, he saw where she had disappeared: into the doorway of the first house. Inside, a light was shifting eerily about.

"Hello? Is anyone in there?"

Reaching out to the wooden door, he wasn't surprised to find it unlocked, but it was surprising when it swung open easily, despite its age. Hesitating only for a moment, Yugi peered inside the house and then stepped fully over the threshold.

The room was even older than the outside betrayed to him, the partition walls along the side falling apart and peeling at the edges. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, brown and grey rags littered the floor around his feet, where wooden sandals had been long abandoned by whoever had lived here and a sunken fireplace dominated the centre of the room. Nothing had been touched for a long time. But Yugi refused to believe that. He had seen someone come in here!

He sighed as he looked around, his eyes taking in the glowing lamp that hung beside the door. "How old do you think this place is?"

The Pharaoh shook his head. "Older than you think. I can sense decades worth of life and history in this place, but... it's been a very long time since life was felt within these walls, except..."

"Except what?"

"Someone was in here recently."

"When?"

Again, he looked confused. "Long ago... yet, not so very long ago..."

"Well, which one is it?" He turned away from Yami and something caught his eye in the dim light. Ignoring the shoes in the dirt gulley, he stepped straight up to the wooden floor and his eyes widened as he saw the dirty white paper lying among a pile of ashes.

"Look!" he said, whispering excitedly, gently picking it up. "It's kind of dirty..." He brushed the ash off and ran his finger along the perforated edge, as though it had been torn out of a scrapbook. He turned it over and found the note written in a shaky hand.

"It's says about the lost village, like Mio said."

"What does it say?"

_" 'I've heard rumours about the Lost Village before. Long ago, a massacre occurred on the day of a ceremony, and the village was wiped from the map. Twin deities statues in the forest lead lost people to the village entrance. Once you pass through the gate, however, you cannot go back. The village eternally relives that night of death. The insane laughter of a woman is said to echo throughout the village. The only survivor of the massacre was a lone woman.'"_ He held it up to Yami. "Is this to do with whoever was here before?"

"It certainly seems newer than the rest of the house, doesn't it," he answered, looking around. "Whoever wrote it must have become trapped here, like it says. But that paper is still old... What happened to them?"

Yugi looked up at him nervously. "Does this mean... Are we trapped here too?"

"Probably..."

"We should get back to the cliff and try and find a way back to Domino, once we find Mio."

Yami looked at him incredulously. "You think it's going to be easy in a village this size?"

"Well... if everyone in the village was killed in a massacre, that means no one is here, right?" Yami nodded. "Mio shouldn't be that hard to find, then, especially with everything being so quiet. Most of these houses are falling apart, where could she possibly go?"

Yami was about to open his mouth, when he looked over Yugi's shoulder in surprise. "There!"

Yugi turned his head in time to see a woman disappear beneath a short curtain dividing the room from the hallway.

_"Where are you...?"_

"Wait up!" Yugi leapt up from the ground, dropping the paper back into place. "Come on!"

He ran through the curtain into the corridor. All along the walls, candles were lit, burning peacefully in their sets and illuminating the rotting walls. The woman was gone again, so Yugi walked steadily along, his hand running cautiously over the cold, damp wood.

_"Why...?"_

Looking sharply to his left, he caught sight of the stairs and heard the creaking footsteps climbing them. At the top of the stairs was another corridor, broken only by a single door. This hallway had very little light and Yugi staggered along, trying no to trip, when his foot knocked something that rustled. He knelt down, his arms waving blindly around on the floor when they felt another piece of paper. Frowning at it, he turned and went back down the stairs and read in the light of the candle at the bottom.

_"Masumi... It's me, Miyako. I came to look for you. Let's go home together. Together, we can make it. Call for me if you find this. I'll be nearby._

_Miss you!_"

In the light of the candle, he saw a shadow behind the note as he read and he turned it over to reveal a picture. It was pretty old, but the figures were clear enough. A young woman in a white blouse and long dark hair, standing next to a tall, lanky-looking man. They were both smiling and looked very happy.

"This must be them. Miyako and... Masumi. Were they trapped here?"

Holding onto the note, he climbed back up the stairs and his eyes rested on the door. Something stirred inside his heart as he stared at it, something that shimmered before his eyes and rang in his ears, growing louder and louder, until he was standing in front of it and it was all he could hear.

He reached for the ornate handle and everything went white.

_"Masumi?" _

_The house was cold and dark. She didn't want to sit alone waiting anymore. She had seen him coming into the house, but why wasn't he answering her? Slowly, she made her way through the cloth corridor. Her dreams disturbed her, even in her waking. Cries and screams, small girls in black kimonos hanging by their necks in the middle of the hall, a woman's inane laughter... _

_"Masumi... where did you -"_

_The Lost Village..._

_There he was! _

_"Wait!" _

_Don't come here... _

_A room somewhere behind the house... an open door leading into the garden... he was standing there with his back to her... she reached out to him - _

I don't want to kill anymore.

_She screamed as she fell to the floor, trying to fight against the bloody hands clutching her neck, tighter and tighter until her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped beneath is black form, becoming limp and pale, still hearing the woman's laughter, even as everything began to fade. _

Yugi gasped. Yami's incorporeal hand had pulled his own away from the handle, but he had seen everything. Had he dreamt it? No, of course not. Cautiously, he moved a trembling hand towards the handle again.

"Careful!"

This time, when he touched it, nothing happened. He couldn't ignore it, though. Yami's power made it impossible to ignore the presence within this house... lingering behind that door. Slowly, taking a deep breath, he pulled it open.

A small narrow corridor lay beyond, with an open closet on one side and a broken sliding door on the other. A dim light emanated from the orange lamp on the table beyond.

"That looks like..." Yugi stepped towards the table, staring at the rusted device sitting beside it. "Yeah. This is Mio's spirit stone radio! Is this where she got hers from?"

"I would think so. And that camera too, which is what concerns me."

"What do you mean?"

"She was no stranger to using the camera and she claimed to know all about it. If this is really where Mio got it, she would have had cause to use it here, don't you think?"

Yugi's eyes widened. "You think there are more spirits here? Like Mr. Anderson became?"

In the silence of their thoughts, a gentle sight broke through and they looked suddenly around. In the light of the lamp shone an old red scrapbook. Yugi was still holding the other note and as he picked up the book, another piece of paper fell out, matching the one he held. "They came from here." He flipped it open. Only a few pages remained and the lines written on them where more filled with panic than any of the others.

_"Masumi found my note._

_He WAS in the village! _

_I can see him soon. _

_I can't move... _

_I'll wait here. _

_He'll be back. He'll find the way out. _

_If he comes back "_

The rest of the page was blank. Curious, Yugi flipped through the book, his finger holding down the red edge and his eyes suddenly caught a flash of black ink on the last page and he held it down, reading

_he came _

He shook his head. "I don't get it. Did they escape together? It says he came back for her, so they must have found the way out, right?"

"Somehow, I don't think that was the case."

"Why?"

_"Why...?" _

Yugi froze. He felt cold, some seeping darkness flowing through the air from in front of him. Slowly, he raised his head from the red book.

And stared right into her eyes.

* * *


	7. Pictures

**Chapter 7 - Pictures**

Yugi dropped the book as he fell backwards, thrusting himself away from it. She continued to stare coldly at him as she pulled herself to her feet, invisible feet that faded at the ends of her knees.

_"Where did you go...?"_ Her white lips didn't move and the voice, that had been so clear a moment ago, sounded distant, as though she was speaking from the end of a long corridor; from another world entirely. _"Ma...su...mi..."_

Gasping as he realised that she was staring at the note he still clutched in his hand, the note begging her lover to find her, Yugi recognised her at once as the woman from the photo, the happy, smiling Miyako.

How different she was now! Her blouse and dark skirt were torn and ragged, her silky black hair hung matted over her deathly white face, as she too began to shimmer in and out of existence, like...

Mr. Anderson!

_That man is not truly alive._

They hadn't escaped. The black bruises marring her snowy skin were proof of that.

_"Even though we finally met..."_ Her face slowly shifting to an expression of sheer rage, she reached out a clawed hand to his face.

_[Yugi! Get up!]_

Snapping back to his senses, he leapt to his feet and sprinted back across the room to the door, grabbing the handle. It didn't move. Come on! He rattled the handle and tugged with all his might, but it wouldn't budge.

_"I kept searching for you..."_

A white shimmer passed over the doorframe and she walked through it towards him. He ran back into the room, almost tripping on the red book and scoured the room desperately with his eyes. "Is there no other way out!?"

Something icy cold grabbed him around the throat and he became aware too late of the presence right behind him. He couldn't breathe and the feel of the cold fingers against his windpipe made him gag violently and he tried to pull away. No matter which way he pulled himself, she wouldn't let go. Finally, he flung his arms out behind him and knocked her off. She fell back and disappeared.

"Is she gone?"

_[No!]_

He turned around to see her stalk out of the wall towards him, her hand reaching out to him again.

A bright flash of light sent her reeling back, crying out in shock. There was another quick and everything became still as she slowly collapsed to the ground, a tear escaping her dead eye just before she vanished.

_"Why...?"_

Yugi shook his head as he stared at the empty tatami mat and then he remembered the bright flash and spun around. Mio stood there, camera in hand, holding it up to her eyes. The door stood open behind her and in her hand was a rusted old key.

He sighed with relief. "There you are! I thought I'd lost you -"

"I told you not to follow me." He stopped. She sounded more forceful than she had earlier. "Now you're trapped here too."

"I came here to help you! You looked like you were hurt, like you needed help."

"Well I'm not and I'm fine."

He could well believe it from her attitude, but he couldn't stop his eyes wandering to her right leg as she walked towards him. The limp was gone and she walked with confidence as she strode over to him.

"You have to get out of this village."

"What do you mean, I do? This place is as dangerous to you as it is me!"

"I can take care of myself. I have the camera, too."

Yugi looked at the brown device in her hand, remembering the fatal flash that had brought the woman's ghost to its knees. "Mio... Is this where you got the camera from?"

She didn't answer, but the shine in her eyes told him. "You've been to this village before!"

She sighed. "I have."

"And you escaped. How?"

Shaking her head, she turned away from him. "That was the day I woke up in Domino Forest."

He frowned at her. "And you don't know how you got there? Well, what happened before that?"

Mio's hands tightened on the camera. He stared at her, keeping the camera in the corner of his eye, wondering what else she had seen through its lens. Just how many of these troubled spirits inhabited this house? This village?

Stepping in front of her, he forced her to look up at him. "We need to get out of here. We'll walk back to the cliff where we fell from and see if we can't find another way back up. Once we get back to Domino, we can get Professor Hawkins and the gang and investigate this place properly."

"We won't be able to leave," she said, desperately trying to make him understand. "We're trapped here."

He took hold of her arm. "Well, I won't believe it 'til I see it. Come on!"

* * *

"The camera was made a long time ago, by a spiritualist. He made the camera to take pictures of things that can't be seen by the naked eye," she explained as they trekked back through the forest. It had been a long walk back from the village and Mio had been surprised that they could pass back underneath the entrance gate. "I don't know if he made it specifically to fight spirits, but it has that effect."

"What happens to the spirits once they've been defeated?"

"They disappear for a while, but they always come back," she answered. "I don't really know much about ghosts and spirits, but these ones seem to exist only as memory. That's why they can't recognise anything outside what they remember."

"That's why that woman kept talking to me as if I was Masumi."

"Yeah, and why this village keeps reliving the same night over and over. Because it's the last thing they remember from before they died."

"The ghosts of the village people. You've seen them?" She nodded and they walked on in silence as Yugi slowly took it all in. A haunted village in the middle of their forest, filled with malicious spirits. No wonder Mio was so traumatised when she first arrived at their shop. But where had it come from? Why now?

"How long ago was this massacre?"

Mio shrugged. "A long time ago. At least a hundred, hundred and fifty years, maybe more."

They arrived at the cliff face and Yugi felt a sinking in his stomach as he looked up at the towering rock that stretched up for what seemed like miles. The rock wall was smooth with hardly any juts and crags, besides which Yugi wasn't a very good climber and he guessed Mio probably wasn't either.

"From the look on your face, I'd say going back isn't an option."

"Not really." He turned back to her. "But there must be another way out. Let's head back."

As he stepped back onto the path through the trees, a quick flash of red caught his eye and he looked up to see a butterfly hovering above a strange, grey shape. "What's that?"

Mio looked up and frowned as she saw it. "Don't know. It wasn't there last time."

They pushed their way through the overgrown foliage and found a large grey tent standing along in the middle of a clearing. The cloth was shredded, but it looked to be fairly new, and the lamp inside illuminated a desk filled with papers, a geiger counter and a fax machine. Hanging from a small wooden post was a makeshift radio that looked as though it still worked. Mio frowned as she looked over the papers and Yugi went straight over to the radio. He had a vague idea of how to use one, picking up the receiver and flicking the switch, listening intently as he slowly turned the dial.

"Hello? Can anyone hear me?" White noise was his only answer. Still, he kept trying, turning the dials, flicking different switches, but after half an hour, he had still not found anything. Mio had sat on the floor, clearly bored and holding a pile of the papers in her hand, flicking idly through them. She stopped as she pulled out a faded map.

"This is... the All Gods area."

"Huh? All Gods?"

"Mm. The village is called All Gods Village. This looks like a map of the area with three different crosses on the blank parts."

"Maybe whoever owned this tent was looking for the village -"

The radio finally gave a loud hiss as Yugi turned the dial a fraction. Excitedly, he picked up the receiver. "Hello! Is anyone there! Answer me!"

Nothing. Then they froze as a girl's voice sounded behind the loud buzzing.

_"Why do you kill?" _

_"This is the Domino Forest Warden's Office. Please state your location." _

"We made it through!? Yes! Um, we don't know our exact location, but we fell from a cliff and - "

"Yugi!" He jumped back as Professor Hawkins voice rang loudly across the line. "Is that you, Yugi?"

"Professor! Yeah, it's me! We're alright!"

"Is Mio with you?"

"Yeah."

A loud sigh resonated through the speaker. "Thank god! We've been looking for you for hours! We've had everyone out here, the police, the forest wardens... Where are you?"

Yugi scratched his head. "It's kinda hard to explain, but we fell down a cliff and now we're in a place called All Gods Village."

There was a bang and a metallic shriek that made them both jump back in surprise. "Professor?"

"S-Sorry. Dropped the - the... You're in All Gods..."

"Yeah. And we can't get out! The cliff is too high, we'll never be able to climb it. Professor, we need to get out of here."

"Yes, you do, Yugi. All Gods Village is supposed to be a myth, and though not a well known one, those that do know it have come to fear it. Some years ago, the All Gods Forest was flooded and became a dam and with it, the myth was drowned, or so we thought."

"You know about it then?"

"Where exactly are you calling from?"

Yugi looked around at Mio, who was watching him nervously. "We found an old tent with some documents and a radio inside. We're using it now."

"Good god! That tent was mine!"

"What!?"

"Remember I told you that I went to the All Gods area years ago for work?" Yugi nodded, before remembering that he couldn't see him, but it didn't matter. "Back then, I tried to see if I could find the Lost Village and I set out with my equipment to hike through the forest. There's supposed to be a stone marker of Twin Deities that marks the entrance, but I never found it. Then... One night, I had a dream and I thought I saw the massacre with my own eyes - committed by a spectral man bound in ropes... and a woman who wouldn't stop laughing..." Yugi's hands trembled as they gripped the receiver. "When I awoke the next morning, I was alone in the forest and my tent had gone."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. Yugi... There were stories of people who went missing in the woods and everyone said they had found the lost village. They were never seen again."

Yugi's heart leapt as he remembered something. "But Mio came to this village and she managed to escape somehow."

"Mio was in the village?" There was a long pause. Mio fidgeted with the camera and kept her eyes on the floor. "That would explain a lot..."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind, I'll show you when you get back. Yugi, you need to get out of that village, by whatever means necessary, do you understand?"

"Of course."

"We'll have a search party out looking for you. Be careful!"

"We will. Don't worry." Yugi replaced the receiver, leaving the dial where it was. He had a feeling he would need it again. Smiling, he turned back to Mio. "Everything'll be okay, now. They know where we are."

Mio's eyes became dark. "But that won't help them find us."

* * *

Arthur replaced the receiver with a growing sense of dread in his gut. The warden gave him a questioning glare and, with a bashful smile, the professor handed the radio he had snatched back to him. After giving quick instructions to the missing people's whereabouts, he went back to the opposite office and sat wearily at the desk.

Several minutes later, he looked at the packet on the desk. It was the pictures Mio had given him to develop and looking through them had been a revelation. The first few had been of that night on the park and he was alarmed at the state of the old man, Anderson, his face slashed to pieces. There was also the picture of Yugi that she had taken on the first night and his eyes went wide at the image it depicted; the clear image behind him might have been mistaken as a blur in the film, if not for the fact that the double standing there was the spitting image of Yugi, save for his stern expression, eyes slightly alarmed, and his folded arms. The camera had somehow captured not only Yugi, but his other spirit as well.

Then, he turned to the older photos, from the films before Domino and they were much more disturbing. Pale, blurred images of people in old kimono and covered in injuries, some to the point where they could be mistaken for being alive; a woman in a pure white kimono had broken her neck so badly, it hung to the side at an unnatural angle and she stared up at Arthur with her black mouth open in a cry of pain. Another showed a man and woman together, whose injuries were much like Anderson's, their faces covered in bloody gashes and their arms completely ripped off.

But the one that interested him the most was the picture of Mio with a white ghost wrapped in sacred sutras, gripping her ankle tightly with both hands. Her face was twisted with fear and she seemed to be pleading with the camera to help her as the spirit refused to let go.

Arthur frowned as he picked up the photo, looking at it closely. Apart from the spectral presence, the picture seemed normal enough.

Though it raised the question: if Mio was in the picture, who was holding the camera?

* * *


	8. Unholy Visions

**Chapter 8 - Unholy Visions**

"I wonder if there's another path on the other side of the village?"

Mio shook her head. "The Kurosawa house stands in the way. The forest beyond if blocked off by it."

"What's the Kurosawa house?"

As they reached the top of the hill, she pointed out over the village to the manor in the distance. "The biggest house in the village. It belonged to the village headsman and his family and whatever servants and guests they happened to have."

Yugi was impressed. "You really do know this village well, don't you?"

"I was here for a long time... It felt like forever."

He stared at her pityingly for a moment, but quickly looked away as she turned sternly to him. "What about the West side, then?"

She sighed. "A graveyard. One of the most dangerous places, for obvious reasons."

"I can imagine..." They walked on in silence for several minutes and then Yugi looked back over the village. "So... Where else is dangerous in here?"

She stared at him incredulously. "Pretty much everywhere is dangerous. There are bound spirits in every house, down every alley, and while they don't hurt you there are plenty that will attack you for no reason. The spirits of the villagers still stalk the streets, searching for..." She trailed off. After a moment she continued. "But... by far the most dangerous place in the whole village... is Kurosawa House."

"What's in there?"

Her thin lips tightened. "I'd rather not say."

They had left the stone shrine area and continued to climb up the hill above the village. Yugi led the way, not knowing where he was going, but logic was telling him that from higher ground, he would have a better look at the layout of the village and the best way to get out. As they climbed higher, however, Yugi's heart fell as he saw that Mio was right, and the village was basically boxed in all around by the dense forest and the fences of the great houses. Over in the distance, the manor overshadowed the entire village, like a great monster, and as Yugi stared at it, a strange sensation crept through him and the faint sound of laughter resounded in the back of his mind.

"Yugi?"

He snapped awake and looked around at Mio. "Sorry. Mind wandered off there for a second..." He knelt on the edge of the path, looking down at the houses. "So, do any of the other houses have names?"

She frowned. "Sure. The house we just came from is called Osaka house. Then there's the Tsuchihara house on the far edge of the village. The warehouse next door is theirs too. The two houses in the middle here, the ones connected by the bridge, are called Tachibana and Kiryu Houses. But the people of the village just called them... the Twins' Houses."

"Twin Houses," Yugi nodded. "I can see that."

Mio's eyes widened. What was all this useless banter about? Surely knowing the names of the houses was pointless if he planned to escape it. Then it occurred to her; he was trying to keep her calm, probably to hide the fact that he too was scared. But it was alright for him. He had the 'other spirit' to keep him company.

She was alone now.

Yugi looked up as, with a sigh, Mio placed her hand on her neck. "Huh? What happened to the mark?"

It was true. The red butterfly bruise had disappeared from her neck and from the sad and distant look in her eyes, Mio had never been more sorry to lose it.

"It faded when I came back here."

Yugi stood up and as he did, it came into sight. Further along the path was another red gate and another set of steps. His eyes fixed on it, he ran forward to the foot of the steps and looked up at a dark building at the very top, stretching higher than the tops of the trees, almost seeming to brush against the swirling black clouds gathering above. He stared at it in amazement and turned to Mio, who was staring further down the path.

"Does this path lead out?" he asked, peering down the dark road with her. "No... there's a tree blocking the way... Mio? Are you okay?"

With a furrowed brow, she shifted her gaze from the tree on the path to the building above. Her breathing quickened and she stepped back, something of determination in her eyes.

"No... not yet... not ever..."

"Mio, what's wrong?"

She took a deep breath and turned to smile at Yugi. "You should go and look in that shrine," she said. "Take a good look around for some clues."

"Clues?"

"It might help you to get out of the village."

"Help 'us'!"

Mio shook her head. "I told you. I can take care of myself, and I don't plan to leave this village very soon. You need to, though."

Yugi looked back up at the building. "And this will help me get out?"

"I think so."

He shrugged. "Let's go then."

He tried to take her hand, but she pulled away. "No! I ... I can't go in there."

"Why not?"

She hesitated, shaking her head slightly. "I'm not supposed to go in there."

He stared, confusedly. "Is it against the rules?"

"Yes."

Struggling not to laugh, he answered, "Well, who's here to care whether you keep the rules or not! Come on."

She became angry. "No! I'm not going in there!" Swallowing back her harsh words, she stepped away again. "I'll... I'll wait out here for you, if you come back. If you don't... I'll understand."

He could do nothing, say nothing, except to stare at her, trying to understand. What did she mean, if he came back? Did she think he would leave her waiting out here? And where was there for him to go? She kept shifting her eyes to the tree and then up to the shrine, before finally settling a calm stare on Yugi's confused expression. "Just go. Please."

Slowly, he turned and began to make his way up the steps. When he was halfway up, he looked back and saw her still standing there, watching him.

"I'll be right back," he said. "I promise."

She stiffened as he said this. Her face became stoic, unreadable. "Don't make promises, Yugi. You might find that you can't keep them."

"I _will_ be back."

* * *

There was nothing unusual inside the shrine, except for the partially worn battery torch that he found on the floor. Not only had he tripped over it, but he spent almost five minutes staring unbelievingly at it, and even longer when he realised that it was still working. Shining the beam of light around the shrine, he saw the dull grey walls divided by wooden lattice, beyond which were straw piles that looked suspiciously like dolls and in the centre of the room, an altar table displayed a round, silvery object set on a red cloth and surrounded by two, still burning, candles.

"You see any way out in here?"

Yami shook his head. "But I so sense something in that altar."

Yugi shone the torch on the table and stepped closer, frowning as he stared at the round thing. As he got close up, he saw a dull reflection of himself in it and realised it was a mirror. He looked around it, examining it closely and found that its base was made from some sort of stone, despite the glassy sheen of the mirror itself.

He stopped. Someone was behind him. He span around, but only Yami was there, in spirit form. Wait. Yugi turned back to the mirror and looked closely. The reflection showed Yami! It wasn't so unusual for Yami to show up in mirrors, but never before had be held the appearance of being flesh and blood rather than spirit, as he did in this glass.

"Do you see this?"

"Don't let it bother you. There are plenty of mirrors like that in the world."

"Well, I've never seen one!"

The Pharaoh shrugged. "I show up in all sorts of mirrors. Some reveal me more clearly than others, but you are still the only one that can see me."

"O-kay..."

Still, there was something strange about this mirror, not just because of how clearly it showed Yami, but a strange aura seemed to emanate around it like a faint mist and within the glass, everything seemed black and dismal. Maybe it just wasn't in the light properly, so Yugi reached forward to tilt it up.

The moment his hand touched the stone, the whole room jerked forward and he almost fell into the table. When he regained himself, the shrine had gone.

Yugi found himself standing in an enormous cave. Above his head was the red outline of another Japanese gate and a faint light from the cave roof shone down upon a large square pit and a man standing before it on the other side. The chanting had started.

He stopped when he saw the man, wearing nothing but tattered hakama pants and a strange white blindfold with some sort of spell scrawled across it. The black gaping maw of his mouth hung open, frozen in place and ropes wound tightly around both his arms and across his chest.

As Yugi continued to stare, the man raised one of his rope tethered arms and pointed a single finger down into the pit.

Don't go! Something kept screaming in his head not to step forward, not to go anywhere near them, but he couldn't help himself. Slowly, he stepped towards the black pit.

_...no one must know... _

Before the pit sat a long stone, oblong-shaped and smooth, just long enough for someone to lie down on.

_...eyes that glimpse it..._

He stopped just before the foot of the stone, still staring at the man as he jabbed his finger persistently into the hole.

_...will be blinded by it..._

Someone was watching him. That man was not alone. Behind him stood a neat row of black robed priests, their faces veiled with white, holding monks' staffs in their hands. Turning, he saw another crowd of priests, standing before the gate he had just walked from, and they seemed to be staring up at something above the gate, something he couldn't see...

_...tongues that speak its name... _

He turned back to the pit, looking for the blindfolded man, but he had gone. Ever so slowly, he looked down into the darkness of the abyss...

_... shall be struck dumb... _

It was deep, dark... too dark to see... but he could almost make out...

_"Don't look in there!" _

Gasping, he sharply pulled himself back and fell onto the floor of the shrine, staring up at the mirror on the altar.

"Yugi! What happened?"

"D-Did you see it?" Yami shook his head. "But then... didn't you call me back just now?"

"No. You touched the mirror and suddenly fell back, like you'd been given an electric shock!"

Yugi stared in horror up at the mirror, pointing the torch at it, as though it would show him that place again. It couldn't have been a dream, it had all felt so real. But where was that place? Why had it been shown to him?

Quickly, he shared his memory of it with the Pharaoh and as he watched the spirits face become stern, his fist clenched in fear and his fingers closed around something hard and cold. Frowning, he opened his hand. A small green stone sat in the palm of his hand, shaped like a tiny spear-head and glowing faintly.

"What's this?"

Yami stared at it for a moment. "Perhaps its a spirit stone."

"Hey! We might be able to use it in that radio." He pulled himself to his feet. "Well, we found some clues alright, but nothing that'll help us get out of this village. Unless we need to find that pit. What do you think?"

The spirit didn't answer straight away. He turned and looked towards the entrance door. "I think we should head back to Mio, now. Before she gives up and decides we won't come back."

"That was just stupid," said Yugi, as he pushed open the door. They walked out onto the path, heading towards the steps. "Why would we leave her alone in a place like this."

"Well, clearly she has no problem with leaving you alone in a place like this."

"What do you mean?"

"She's gone."

Yugi turned his head sharply, looking down to the bottom of the steps. Mio was nowhere in sight. He sprinted down to the gate and looked up and down the path. "Oh, what now?"

"Back to the village?"

"Alright!" Yugi turned and began to run, but almost at once tripped over and fell on his face. "Oh, that's a great start..." he muttered into the ground.

"No, Yugi! Look!"

He raised his head and looked back at what had caught his foot. It was the Camera Obscura.

"What?" He sat up and picked the camera up, turning it over in his hands. "She left it behind?"

"Perhaps she thought we'd have more use for it."

"But we can defend ourselves with the Millennium Puzzle! This is great! She's down there in a dangerous village full of spooks and the only weapon against them is up here with us!"

"So... let's go and find her."

Sighing, Yugi pulled himself to his feet, bringing the camera with him. "I wonder how you're supposed to use it?"

_"There!" _

He span around. The white silhouette of a villager was climbing the path towards him and the air around became tense and buzzed painfully in Yugi's ears. It's empty black eyes bore into him from a pale face and in his hand, he held a torch of burning white flame.

"Careful! This spectre can use his energy to affect the atmosphere!"

"I know!" Yugi shouted, blocking his ears to try and stop the pain. It felt like a compressed aeroplane cabin during take-off. "What do I do!"

_[The camera.]_

He almost didn't hear Yami's thought just before he disappeared. Of course, he wouldn't want to stick around, not with a spirit harming camera in front of him. Panicking, Yugi held the camera up to his eyes, staring into the viewfinder.

It was completely different from any camera he'd ever used. The lens was dominated by a golden circle of runes and the shimmering air became still as the spirit came into clear focus, the torch shining brightly in his hand, a sneer on his dead face. Yugi's heart was pounding. Was he to take a picture now?

_Wait._

His pounding heart almost stopped completely. The voice that murmured in his head did not belong to Yami. It seemed to speak to him beyond the connection that he shared with Yami and he reached out his voice towards this unfamiliar presence.

_"What am I waiting for?" _

_The runes will glow as the camera draws strength. Take a picture when all the runes glow. Then, when the lens shines red..._

Determined, Yugi took a step away from the approaching villager, staring at it through the camera. The first rune lit up and the others followed in quick succession. The last one lit. Yugi's finger found the shutter as the villager reached the top of the slope.

FLASH!

The whole world seemed to slow down in that fraction of a second, as that which must never be seen by mortal eyes was caught on material film, the mystical drawn into reality. A loud cry pierced the buzzing atmosphere and the villager staggered back, but he was quickly on his feet again.

In a blind fury, it ran up to him, raised its torch above Yugi's head, preparing to strike and -

The runes flashed crimson red.

_Now! _

FLASH!

Yugi could almost feel the deep wound the last shot inflicted as, with a loud, lingering scream, the spirit fell back, still clinging to his torch and faded into nothing.

_"The... Twins..."_

A sigh, both of relief and shock, escaped Yugi as he lowered the camera. The world seemed all the more surreal now than it did through the camera lens. There would be no relaxing, though. This village was filled with them.

"The Twins..." Yugi looked over the slope to the houses Mio had pointed to, the twin houses. He gasped as the white light of numerous torches glowed beneath the connecting bridge.

_[Do you see that? Below the Twin Houses!]_

_[I see it.]_

_[Do you think Mio is down there?]_

_[Run, Yugi.]_

He didn't need to be told twice. He sprinted down the slope, down past the stone shrine and out into the village again. Hesitating only once outside Osaka house, expecting that woman to come out again, he ran through the dark streets, his eyes looking every way for more of the villagers.

A flash of red made him stop and look down a dark slope. "The Twin houses... Is this them? But where's the bridge?" He ran down between the dark houses and turned the corner. "There!" Looking up triumphantly, he saw the long bridge stretching above the path between the two houses. His smile faded slightly as something white flickered on the path for a moment.

_Why did you leave me alone...?_

Yugi turned back to the path. There she was! He ran forward just as she turned another corner out of sight. As he followed her, he suddenly found himself in a large clearing behind the Twin Houses and before him stood a large gate, beyond which was the looming shadow of...

"Mio! Where are you going!"

She ignored him, limping up to the gates and pushing against them. They were too heavy for her, but she persisted until they swung open. Yugi ran to catch her, but she slipped through before he could reach her and the gates slammed shut in his face.

He shook his head. "What is she thinking!? She told me this place was dangerous!"

But no matter how hard he pushed on the gates of Kurosawa, they would not open.

* * *

Author's Note: Ooooh! Mio's gone to the most dangerous place in the village! How will Yugi follow her? I actually based all the camera functions on how they work in the game, charging it up by pointing it at the ghost and the red flash attack is called a zero shot... I think. You use it when their energy is strongest, usually when they're about to attack you.

Keep r&ring!!!

* * *


	9. The Caged Boy

**Chapter 9 - The Caged Boy**

"OPEN UP!" Yugi shouted out in desperation, kicking the heavy wooden doors, though immediately regretting it. "Ouch!"

"Calm down, Yugi. Look."

He looked back at the ornate handle and saw two slots on either side of the door. "This looks kind of like a lock," he remarked looking at the butterfly carvings made into it. As he reached out to touch it, a blue light flashed across it. "What was that?" Then something trembled in his hand and he looked down to see he was still holding the camera. He looked at it for a moment, then looked through the viewfinder at the door, his one open eye widening as the circle of gold runes turned blue and something began to whine in his ear like static. Bringing the shutter down, the blue flashed red and the image froze before the lens. Before his amazed eyes, it began to shift and change, showing something that hadn't been in the shot: crimson butterflies, glowing brightly.

Shaking his head, he brought it away from his eye. "What does this mean?"

"It could be a clue on how to find the key."

"But this doesn't make any sense!" Yugi turned to face the Pharaoh desperately. "Why is it that Mio was able to pass through here and then seconds later we need a key for it?"

Yami turned to look at the gate. "Maybe she had some help."

"From who?" He stopped. "Maybe... the woman in the white kimono?"

"Possibly."

Sighing, he turned away from the gate and looked back across the courtyard. A butterfly was hovering there. "Man, these things are everywhere! Where do you think they all came from?"

"What do you -" Yami turned to see it and stopped. "Just like in your picture. Quite a coincidence, don't you think?"

Yami smirked at his confused friend, before the young boy's eyes opened with realisation and he looked back in time to see the butterfly flying off between the Twin Houses. "Wait!"

They were off after it. It led them away from Kurosawa, past the Twin Houses and down towards the house of the ghostly woman Miyako. Yugi's stomach dropped as he thought of this, hoping the butterfly wasn't leading them there of all places, but it continued to drift peacefully past that place, down to some ruined storehouses. The roofs had collapsed on most of them, and there wasn't a single lantern or candle in this part, so it was impossible to get a good look at any of them, much less look for a key. It hadn't looked like an ordinary turn-in-the-lock key either, rather that it had to slide in somehow...

Yugi drew to a halt as a new source of light appeared to his right, behind a ruined stable. A crumbling well sat quietly at the side of a house, the only one still standing amidst all the ruin; it looked only big enough to be a storage house, but a small cobbled path led to the front door, which was adorned with a lantern. He approached it and tried the door, but it was locked up tight.

"Think the key's in here?" he asked.

"They seem to think so."

Yugi looked up to see three red butterflies hovering around the top of the door and over the path. "I guess. But how do we get in there?"

Yami cocked his head, looking pointedly at something. "The back door?"

Following his gaze, he saw a small door in the side of the fence, just big enough for him to crawl through. He shrugged. "Alright." Reaching down, he was pleased to find this, at least, wasn't locked and he crouched through to the other side. Though the garden was technically a part of the forest, the earthy sides sloped up, making escape even less possible than it seemed from the top of the hill. Sighing, he made his way up the narrow path into the wider area.

"Who's there!"

Turning sharply, he saw the only window in the storage room, barred, rusting and with a white figure stirring behind it. Pulling up the camera, he waited for it to lunge through the wall at him.

"Are you an outsider?"

Cautiously, he lowered the camera and took a hesitant step towards the window. A boy stood on the other side, his shock of white hair making his face unhealthily pale and his dirty hands gripped the bars as he stared at Yugi in amazement.

"Please! Answer me! Who are you?"

"Um... My name is Yugi, and yeah, I don't come from this village."

"So, you are an outsider... How on earth did you get into the village, Yugi? No one is allowed in once the festival begins."

"I... Wait, you remember my name?"

The boy frowned. "You just told me!"

"But, you don't think I'm someone else? Uh, never mind. What are you doing in there?"

The boy's expression darkened. "I am being punished for disobeying the Headsman. It doesn't matter, though, since I still failed." Yugi jumped as he gasped excitedly. "That is why you must help me!"

"Sure, I'll help you. Want me to get you out, right?"

"No! By the time you did that, it'd be too late!"

"What do you mean?"

His face becoming deadly serious, he silently beckoned Yugi forward. Confused, Yugi stepped closer to the window. "The ritual will begin soon. We cannot allow that to happen, or else..." He lowered his head. "I know the pain of that ritual. We swore we wouldn't allow it to happen again!"

The boy fell into an angry silence. "What's your name?" Yugi asked, reminding him that he was still there.

He looked up sharply, his black eyes pulled from their daze. "It's Itsuki."

"Alright, Itsuki. What is it you want me to do?"

He swallowed hard before answering. "Go to Kurosawa House and find a girl called Sae. Once you've found her, get her out of this village."

"Is she in danger?"

"Yes. A lot of danger. Will you help me?"

"I will. I have a friend in Kurosawa House too, but... I don't know how to get past the gates."

Itsuki pointed out of the bars. "See that?"

Yugi turned as another butterfly seemed to materialise in the back of the garden, hovering above an engraved stone, depicting two people, one of them headless.

"I saw one of those outside the village."

"There are statues like that all over the village. Inside two of them, you'll find the keys to the gate."

Yugi turned back to Itsuki. "But how will I know which ones?"

"They will show you," he replied mysteriously, before his eyes glazed over and he disappeared below the windowsill. Yugi stared through the bars for several minutes, before he finally shook himself from his spell.

_[Do you think he was really alive?]_

_[It looked like he was, but I could sense no lifeforce within him. No, he is just like the others in the village, though far, far more aware than them.]_

_[I'll say! He remembered my name, he didn't try to call me someone else he knew!]_

The spirit frowned inwardly as he looked up the road as they emerged from the storehouses. "Why don't we examine that stone you found while we're here?" he said aloud.

Yugi followed his gaze and cringed when he looked at Osaka house. "With that woman inside?"

"I don't sense her presence anymore. Perhaps she is gone... for the moment."

Still hesitant about entering that house again, Yugi nonetheless made his way back up the lane to the door. Inside, it was quiet and still, not at all what it had been like on their first entrance, and Yugi returned to the second floor room without any problems, until he reached the radio.

"Do you remember how Mio used this thing?" he asked.

Yami shrugged. "If you don't remember, I won't. Didn't she turn one of the dials?"

"Um..." He twisted the rusted knob and the room filled with white noise. Yugi froze, looking around the room to see if the woman would come back. Sighing when he saw that they were still alone, he snapped the green stone into the window and placed his hand on the dial again. As he turned it, a voice began to echo through the radio, vibrating under his fingertips.

_"At this rate... will become the Kusabi... of... Crimson Sacrifice Ritual... I will see the land... of the Dead... The place that must not be seen... The ritual that must not be seen... it cannot even.... spoken about..." _

Yugi slowly straightened as he listened to the voice. Not only did it sound just like the voice in the camera, but everything he said sounded eerily like what he had heard in his vision. The pit in the floor... Where did it lead?

"What's a Kusabi?" he asked aloud.

"Something to do with a ritual of sacrifice."

"Wait! Is that the ritual Itsuki was talking about?"

A loud hiss interrupted him as the man's voice began again.

_"A ritual.... one sister... the other... kill one... fear the Remaining..." _

Somehow, the way the man said the last word made it feel like it should be a capital. It felt significant, special in some way. Something to be respected.

"What was that about?"

"I don't know. One thing I know for sure, though, is that a sacrificial ritual is being held at Kurosawa house and Mio is up there right now."

Yugi gasped. "Is that the ceremony that this village keeps re-living?"

A dense silence fell between them as they thought of the consequences of such a ritual, the ritual held on the same night that the entire village vanished from the world.

"What happened that night?"

"I think it wise not to dwell on it, Yugi. We should focus our attentions on getting out of this village."

Yugi got to his feet. "Better go find those keys, then."

But just as he was leaving, the radio started crackling again. For several long moments, they listened to nothing, waiting for something to happen.

Yugi almost jumped out of his skin as a girl's voice echoed across the radio.

_"...Mio... are you there?... I'll... waiting... Find me... don't leave me... with her..."

* * *

  
_

"Well, where do we start looking?"

Yugi sighed as he looked up and down the village, down towards the warehouse and then up to the Twin Houses. "There can't be that many of these stones, can there?"

But he was wrong. Walking down the street, they saw at least five of these stones and not one of them held the keys that they needed. By the time they had come back around all the way to Kurosawa, they had seen almost a dozen, all of them with the same two people, one of them without a head.

"Why do you think that is?" Yugi asked. "Why do they have so many of the same stone? Usually, in villages like this, they just put one up at the entrance and that's all."

"Well, this place is the All Gods village, and each stone was meant to represent a deity. Clearly they had a lot to show for."

"Still, it would've made our lives a lot easier just to have two of the damn things!"

Yami smirked in amusement. "You shouldn't curse on sacred items, Yugi. _You _might get cursed."

Yugi gaped at him. "What do you think this is?"

"Touché."

A red glow appeared. "And I still wanna know where these things are coming from!" he shouted, so caught up in his tirade he forgot to be surprised. "Are you gonna help us!?"

The butterfly that had appeared bobbed up and down for a moment, as though answering Yugi's question and then flew off between the houses. Yugi ran after it as it joined another butterfly and drifted out across the houses and led him all the way around the Twin Houses. Far behind, beside a bridge across a small stream, several of them hovered above a single deity stone and as Yugi approached, his heart leapt with excitement as he saw a hollow space at the bottom. Reaching down, his hand grabbed the cold stone block, just big enough to slide into the Kurosawa lock, engraved with the symbol of the butterfly.

"Alright! One down!"

One of the crimson lights dove in front of his face and then swept through the air away from the Twin Houses.

Yugi followed it to the top of the village, where the Stone Shrine stood. Another gathering of butterflies stood there and the second key was inside.

By the time he reached Kurosawa gate with a key in each hand, he definitely thought better of the creatures. He slid the keys into the lock, sensing something break over the mechanism and when he pointed the camera at it, the blue light that had shone there before had vanished.

"I guess that means it's safe to go inside," he said.

_"Outsiders!" _

He span round. They had surrounded him.

Villagers wielding shining white torches glared at him with empty black eyes, sneering as they slowly approached him, waving torches, pitchforks and staves. There had to be ten, maybe fifteen of them. He wouldn't be able to fight them all.

With a cry, one lunged at him and he ducked back, avoiding the swipe of the stave, staggered and fell backwards.

* * *


	10. Across the Whisper Bridge

**Chapter 10 - Across the Whisper Bridge**

_"Mio... Wait!" _

_"Mayu, come on! Come on!" _

_"Wait! I can't! Mio, please! Don't leave me! D-!"_

A shrill scream rang in Yugi's ears amidst the rustling of leaves and he sharply sat up. For some reason, he expected to find himself back in the dark forest, so it was a surprise when he saw that he was sitting on the cold ground, staring at a long bridge, stretching off into the distance. Several moments passed before he remembered what had happened and where he was: Kurosawa House, where Mio had gone.

Slowly getting to his feet, Yugi groaned as a sharp pain pierced his head and he pressed his palm to his aching temple. He was freezing cold and his arms and legs had gone numb. "What happened?" he moaned.

He heard the Pharaoh chuckle. "You were knocked out. When the gates opened, the villagers showed up. You staggered back, fell through and hit your head as you went, but the gates swung shut again so the villagers couldn't follow you."

Yugi turned to look at the grand wooden gates and then stared at him incredulously. "That makes no sense at all. They're ghosts! Surely they could just... walk straight through them, couldn't they?"

Yami's face darkened. "I sensed that they were... afraid of this place."

They looked up to the house and Yugi couldn't help but shiver. "There's something... weird about that house."

"Which is saying something," Yami remarked. "Considering what we've seen of the village so far."

Taking a heavy step forward, still struggling to get the feeling back into his numb legs, he switched on the torch that was clasped in his hand and saw a glint in the faint light as it reflected the camera on the ground. He picked it up and stepped onto the bridge. It creaked and groaned with each step he took, as though protesting his weight on its fragile structure, and he looked fearfully over the rail to the water below. The wide lake was covered with a thin layer of mist that let very little light to the surface of the water, which was cold-looking, dull, grey and lifeless like everything else.

_Keep walking,_ he told himself. Listening to the groans of the bridge, Yugi shuddered at the thought of being plunged into the lake's merciless depths and he turned his gaze forcefully away from it, focusing instead on the house; a less pleasing prospect, but certainly a less worrying one at that precise moment.

Then his foot hit against something cold and he tripped.

As his face hit the bridge, the creaking became louder and for one terrible moment, he thought he heard the wood begin to give, snapping underneath him. He froze, his mind alive with panic. If he got up now, the bridge could break beneath him and he'd find himself struggling in the icy water below; if he didn't move, the wood might break anyway. Should he move to get out of danger or wait for it to pass? At last, after the few seconds in which this whole argument flitted through his mind, he decided to wait. He lay there, completely still until the creaking stopped. Sighing, he pulled himself up onto his knees, relishing the silence. Well, almost silence, if not for the whispering -

Wait.

He could still feel the cold thing around his foot, and what's more, it was pressing down into his ankle....

His head turned sharply to look at his foot.

A white hand reached up through the broken bridge and gripped tightly to his ankle.

Crying out in shock, he tried to pull himself free, shaking his foot, but it gripped him all the tighter, holding on as if for dear life. It shimmered, like the hand of a spirit, but he could feel the cold, clammy fingers on his skin and he cringed at the feel of the spongy softness of rotting flesh as it tried to pull him closer and closer to the hole. Kicking out, the hand was bent back and finally let go, flailing around as it tried to find him again, but Yugi had already pulled back.

He was panicking, the memory of the icy, wet fingers on his flesh shocking him out of any voluntary movement as he crawled frantically backwards along the bridge, ignoring the creaks that had caused him so much worry only moments ago.

Suddenly, the hand retreated back below the hole. Just as Yugi's heart rate began to return to normal, two hands reached up, pressed down on the bridge and a head of black hair began to rise up from the lake underneath.

_[The camera, Yugi! Use the camera!]_

His hands scrambling for the old device, he held it up to his eye, staring at the thing that now started to float slowly towards him, its arms held out on either side of itself. The runes lit up with a hiss.

FLASH!

A strangled cry of pain rang out, then a strange gasping sound, before the thing slowly fell back and disappeared below the hole.

As he finally began to calm down, Yugi pulled himself shakily to his feet, holding onto the side for balance and he felt Yami's hand on his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" Yugi nodded dumbly. "We've arrived."

Yugi turned as he heard this. They stood before another set of gates, ornately decorated in a way that made the other ones look plain and simple, and stretching up higher to a wooden arch intricately carved with the symbol of a butterfly.

Taking a deep breath that forced him back into control of his limbs, Yugi stepped up to the gates and pushed against them. They slid open easily and revealed a courtyard on the other side, lit with stone lanterns along the path that led straight to the front doors of Kurosawa. He looked up to the roof and the buildings behind. The house was huge. He began to wonder how easy it would really be to find Mio in this place.

_Where are you? _he thought, as he approached the gates.

A flash of white forced him to stop. The girl in the white kimono had suddenly appeared before the doors, facing away from Yugi. Gently, she pushed her hands against the doors, but instead of opening them, she simply faded through the wood.

As she disappeared, a delirious giggle echoed across the courtyard.

The inside of the manor house was almost completely derelict. The vapour from the lake hung about the main room like a dense mist and rotted at the wooden floors, which were stained with brown and black splashes and littered with wilted flower petals. At some point, guests were probably greeted in this hall and Yugi could almost picture the household standing on the raised floor, the servants taking their shoes as they entered a vibrant, colourful house, the faded remnants of which stood before him. The long curtain hanging across the entrance hall was torn in places and thick with dust.

Frowning, he lifted the torch as something shifted on the other side of the curtain... but then the light began to flicker. Yugi hit the torch against his palm, but the beam died and no matter how many times he flicked the switch, it wouldn't come back on. "Damn!" he hissed, afraid to raise his voice in the silent house.

Then suddenly, there was a loud bang. Yugi span around to see the door of the house was now closed. He pulled them, as hard as he could, but they wouldn't budge and as he struggled, he dropped the useless torch to the ground.

_Don't leave me... _

Yugi looked up sharply. A dark shape moved behind the curtain and a glistening pair of eyes stared at him sadly through the large tear.

"Mio?"

At the sound of that name, she turned away and disappeared, leaving a faint light behind her. Yugi ran up to the curtain, pulling it aside to see her limping towards a round window at the end of the hall and as he struggled to get through, she opened a door and vanished into the room beyond.

Finally freeing himself from the tangle of the curtain, Yugi ran up to the door and pulled it open. A gust of wind rushed into his face and he found himself looking into a dark corridor and somewhere nearby, he heard a door slide shut.

"Mio! Are you down here?" Only the silence of the corridor answered him and he hesitantly stepped into it, letting the door fall closed behind him.

Suddenly, a presence hit him as forcefully as the gust of wind and his breath caught in his throat as suddenly a swarm of white villagers began to rush down the corridor towards him.

_The Kusabi is coming!_

Closer and closer, their faces twisted with fear, they ran straight at Yugi and he held up his hands as if to stop them. But the moment they reached him, they vanished.

Slowly, he continued through the corridor, feeling the presence grow stronger and stronger as he walked cautiously through, though no more villagers appeared. There was only one light in the whole hallway, at the very end beside a door. Yugi's eyes widened at the splashes and handprints all along the wall and door in a colour that was unmistakably blood. He almost gagged at the sight of it. There was so much! It took him a lot to reach out to the handle of the door and he was almost relieved to find that it was sealed shut.

"Wonder if I can take a picture?" As soon as he said this, another presence filled his mind and he held up the camera towards the door, seeing the blue haze around the rim of the lens. FLASH! The photo froze in place before his eyes and then slowly began to shift. It showed him a room, a single lantern sitting in the middle of the floor, where two bloody bodies sat side by side, gashes across their pale faces and their limbs ripped off. The walls seemed to be a mirror of what was out here, splattered with blood and the prints of clawing hands.

The image faded and Yugi pulled the camera away from his eyes, disgusted by what he had seen. Even if this thing had saved his life, he began to feel more uneasy about carrying it around.

_Has she returned?_

A villager in black robes appeared briefly at the end of the hallway, but he vanished behind the next corner. Yugi shuddered as he left the light of the lantern, wishing sorely that his torch was working, but he made his way along, reminding himself that one of his friends may well be in danger. At the corner, he looked to where the priest had gone and saw a pair of sliding double doors. As he walked up to them, he shrugged to himself, thinking that they looked normal enough.

_[Yugi! There's something in there.]_

Yugi stopped, his hand poised above the door handle. _[What is it?]_

Yami didn't answer. Instead, Yugi was suddenly flooded with a sense of dread and fear that overwhelmed him, not only from the Pharaoh, but from something inside this room.

Trembling from the force of it, Yugi nonetheless shook his head. "Mio could be in there. She can't defend herself against what's in this house."

_"By far the most dangerous place in the whole village... is Kurosawa House."_

Whatever made it dangerous... it didn't matter. Nothing could stop him here.

Sharing in his resolve, Yami reached down to the door with Yugi and they slid it open.

The room beyond was larger and grander than anything they had seen so far. The centre was on a raised platform, divided by partition walls that had been decorated with mountain scenery and cherry blossom trees. In the very centre was a sunken fire-place, an incense burner hanging above it from the ceiling. The air was quite light in this room, unnaturally so and Yugi stepped up towards the fireplace uneasily. The room looked even bigger from the middle and he slowly turned on the spot, taking in every part of it, trying to figure out which part made him feel the way he did. Something in here was making his heart pound faster, his wide eyes feel dry and his limbs become weak and numb.

Looking down into the fireplace, something caught his eye and he stooped down carefully. It had been many years since that fire had been used, yet he still felt as though it could burn him, given half the chance, and some part of him even expected it to burst into flame as soon as his hand touched the cold ash. It was all nonsense, of course, and he managed to pull out a slightly burnt piece of paper. He brushed the ashes from it and read the hastily written words.

_"Yae is not coming back. Did she really leave Sae behind? Did she survive in the forest? _

_"If Sae is cleansed and acts as Shrine Maiden alone, the * might be appeased. The records do not mention any rituals with a single Shrine Maiden, but I will do it. I have to try. _

_"Yae... Why did you run? Why won't you come back?"_

Yugi frowned as his eyes returned to the * sign at the top of the page. What did that mean? But the page was clear about one thing. The girl, Sae, had been in this house.

"They were going to use her for the ritual, weren't they?" he said.

"I wonder if the ritual took place in this house...?" Yami wondered aloud. Sighing, he looked around the room. "Let's go, Yugi. There's nothing else here."

They both knew he was lying, but they said nothing. It was impossible to pin-point exactly where this malevolent presence was, but since it hadn't made itself known, it couldn't have been that much of a threat. Yugi left the paper in the fireplace, his experience with the Miyako woman's ghost teaching him not to hang on to such things and made his way off the platform.

A light flashed through the room.

Yugi looked up at the windows in the roof above as another flash, followed by a deep rumbling, filled the room. "A storm?"

He stared for a moment, waiting for the sound of rain that didn't come. Turning, he saw another door behind the partition wall and made his way across to it. He didn't get very far, as his foot once again caught against something.

He stopped. The floor was shadowed, so he couldn't see what was there, but it hadn't tried to grab his foot this time. Still... there was something there... He slowly began to bend down, his eyes making out a vague shape on the ground, but not very clear. Bending down, he got closer, closer, trying to see...

A flash of light revealed a screaming face staring up at him.

Yugi leapt back in fright and tripped backwards, almost falling to the ground and he cried out as he saw a body at his feet and another behind him and another and another and -

The empty room had suddenly been filled with dead bodies, bleeding, leaning against the walls, sprawled out on the floor. Every way he looked he saw more blood, more faces fixed in expressions of horror and pain, and his panic began to rise as he stumbled back across the room, staring at them all, the ones caught between the raised platform and the ground, the ones surrounding the fireplace.

He raised his eyes to the fireplace.

She laughed her hideous, wild laugh, her mouth wide open with glee.

The world seemed to slow down as he stared at her, unable to move. Her white kimono was splattered and soaked with blood, her pale cheeks smeared with it and still she continued to laugh, framed in the carnage all around her feet. Her laughter became a distant echo, becoming more wild, more terrible the longer it went on and Yugi could not tear his eyes from her, mesmerised by the mirthless sounds erupting from her mouth. It seemed almost to be a laugh of... despair. Ultimate insanity.

As she threw back her head in a long, high-pitched scream, a white mist began to envelop her and it was then that Yugi saw the shimmering red mark on her neck. Not a butterfly, but a straight line across her throat.

The mist began to shift, taking a definite form and Yugi looked up at it as the girl faded into the background, stepping out of the spotlight as the creature moved towards him, its clawed hands reaching out to Yugi. It's body was bound in ropes and the broken ones, where his arms had been freed, drifted around him as if in the water, and his almost-human face screamed silently with empty eye sockets.

Something shifted at his feet and Yugi leapt back as one of the bodies got up, reaching desperately out to him as the creature got closer. The edge of the mist touched him and he convulsed and fell lifeless to the ground. Yugi backed up sharply and fell from the platform to the ground.

He landed on empty floor. The bodies had vanished. The girl had gone.

But the creature was still approaching.

Still sitting on the ground, he pulled himself away from the platform as it got closer and closer, and he watched its flailing hands, knowing that just one touch could -

His back hit the wall. He couldn't move. Couldn't escape.

Suddenly, the wall vanished and his heart dropped as he fell through. Hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him through the open door, where he lay shell-shocked, listening to the door being slammed shut above him.

Gulping at the air, trembling like a drowning person, he slowly pulled himself to his feet and looked over at his rescuer.

"Mio!"

She didn't reply. She just stared at the door she had closed and after a moment, she raised her hand and a blue shimmer crossed the frame and settled into place. Yugi's eyes widened as he watched her, then he remembered the camera.

"Here," he said, holding it out to her. "You need it more than I do. I can protect myself with the Millennium Puzzle, so you don't have to worry."

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the camera in his hand, then she shook her head. "I-I can't use that," she said, so quietly, she might have been whispering.

"What? But... it's yours!"

Again, she shook her head and stared at the door. He followed her gaze and a chill ran down his spine at the memory of what was behind it.

"What was that thing?"

"It's called the Kusabi. Sae controls it."

Yugi turned sharply to her. "Sae? You mean that girl was Sae?"

"Yes... And if you see her again..." Her eyes were dark as she looked up at him and he could almost see something, something moving, a living memory, within the onyx irises. "Run for your life."

* * *

Author's Note: So sorry about the delay! Had a bit of work to do. I've been looking forward to this chapter though and I had an mp3 of Sae's laughter playing all the way through writing it. Scary stuff!

Please r&r! It makes my day!


	11. Light and Shadow

**Chapter 11 - Light and Shadow **

The faint blue light over the door was still glowing faintly, bringing some much needed colour to the dismal surroundings and Yugi stared at it for several moments. When he reached his hand out, it seemed to repel his touch and his fingers hovered uselessly over the door frame.

"What did you do here?" he asked. No answer. He turned just as another bolt of lightning lit up the small garden where he stood, and in its light, he just saw Mio's faint silhouette, hobbling as she climbed the stairs with her hand clutching desperately to the rail.

Yugi sprinted after her, but no sooner had he reached the second landing than another lightning bolt drew his attention to the garden. A great tree was growing in the very centre and beside it, hanging sutras across its bark, was a man in black robes.

_The time is close at hand... The Malice is growing... restless..._

He stared at the man for a moment and then remembered Mio, looking back up the stairs just as the sound of a closing door reached his ears. Shaking his head incredulously, he leapt the last few steps and stood before the door, Mio nowhere in sight.

A sudden, piercing cold swept through him and his eyes were clouded for a moment, before the ghostly figure of the man in black robes passed completely through him and approached the door, his staff clinking each time it hit the ground.

_First we deal with the outsider... _

Yugi's eyes widened when he heard this. "Hope he doesn't mean me."

"He doesn't even know you're there," replied Yami. "I guess he is one of the bound spirits Mio was telling us about."

"I wonder where he was going?"

Hesitantly, he stepped towards the door, watching the frame as though he expected the robed man to leap out at him from the other side. The handle of the door was icy cold, but the door swung open easily and when he reached the corridor on the other side, his tight grip on the camera loosened. A few flickering candles dimly lit the small hallway, leaving him wondering for a moment who had lit them and how, until the door in front of him suddenly clicked shut.

"Did Mio go in there?" He stepped hastily forward, his hand reached out to the door.

_Yae... _

He froze, his fingers just inches from the door.

_Please understand... The Remaining such as us must live... for the sake of the village. _

The voice was the same as the man in the black robes and as Yugi's hand touched the cold door, he held up the camera, ready for the apparition to attack when he entered the room beyond.

He gasped in surprise as he opened the door.

It was much brighter in here than in the half-lit corridor and the walls were decorated with ornate, scarlet panels and antique bookcases that looked remarkable, despite the decay and woodworm they had obviously suffered. The centre of the room was dominated by a pentagram bookcase, its contents scattered on the floor at Yugi's feet as he looked down to see a mass of brown, faded papers and torn book bindings. Reaching down, he picked up the nearest book, and the one that had suffered the least damage, only for the middle pages to fall out in his hands and crumble to dust.

"Whoa... old..."

"Probably owned by the Master of the house," suggested Yami. "And, judging from the size of this place and its high place on the lake... Master of the whole village too."

Yugi's eyes narrowed as he scoured the book in his hand. The calligraphy was faded, but still legible and his eyes were drawn to the repeated symbol, written in dark red, that seemed to occur every few sentences, like a prayer or chant.

"Hey, listen to this...

_"The gate to hell is called the *.  
Gaze not upon the *.  
Eyes that glimpse the * will be blinded by the *.  
Speak not of the *.  
The mouth which utters the * will be made speechless by the .  
Listen not to the *.  
Those who heed the * are turned heartless by the *."_

"But what is it supposed to be?"

"I don't know... Hey, there's more over here!"

The whole room was littered with books. Most of them were just old novels and poetry anthologies, but the books that seemed to have come from the pentagram bookshelf held information about the village, though they were too badly damaged to read much and all Yugi could figure out was the number of births in the village for a particular decade and the yearly harvest records. A banister separated the room from a gulf in the floor that overlooked the entrance hall, and Yugi could see looking over that a number of other papers had fluttered down to the bottom.

"What do you think happened in here?" he asked. "Can't imagine someone who keeps records and stuff for the whole village would be careless enough to let it get into this state."

"But remember, Yugi, this village has been abandoned for a long time."

"Still, it looks like there was a fight in here..."

"Perhaps there was." Yugi looked up at his friend at the sound of the dark tone in his voice. "We're not the first to come to this village since it disappeared."

"Well, Mio came here, to start with." Yugi looked around the room, sighing miserably. "She didn't come in here. Why does she keep running from us?"

Yami shook his head. After a moment, he suddenly pointed to the pile of papers in the corner. "There's a butterfly on that one."

Frowning, Yugi leant down and the red symbol caught his eye at once. He lifted the paper, dislodging it from the others piled on top of it, and saw a small line of text written beneath it. The edge was ripped and it looked as though it once belonged to a whole book, but there were only a few sentences for Yugi to read.

_"Shrine Maidens of the Past and Future, made into Crimson Butterflies, return from the * as guardians of the village. Those that become butterflies ascend to heaven, parting the skies above, inviting the light upon us."_

"Shrine maidens..." An image of the laughing, bloody woman flashed through his mind and, shuddering, he put the paper quickly back down. "Let's keep looking. Mio has to be around here somewhere."

"It's strange..." said Yami, as they went back into the dark corridor. "If the village believed that the crimson butterflies brought light into the village, why is it that All Gods is covered in darkness when the village is swarming with them?"

Yugi shook his head. "Maybe... something's stopping them."

"But what?"

"But, that's assuming that the myth is true. It could just be a religious belief, or something, but with no grounds for truth."

Yami nodded, but Yugi could tell he still wasn't convinced. To take their minds off it, he pointed to the door opposite. "Let's check in there."

A small bedroom awaited them, divided in the middle by a greying screen and lit only by the small candle beside a bookcase in the far corner. A cushion and desk beside it made Yugi think of a reading room, and he guessed that it must have belonged to a scholar of sorts. But the room was empty and Yugi sighed as he turned to leave.

"Wait. Look."

He turned at the Pharaoh's command and saw the outline of a door on the other side of the screen. As he stood there, staring at it, a slight broken, hissing sound reached his ears and he watched curiously as he walked around the screen towards it.

_Why have they trapped me here?_

The voice drew him to a stop. It was distant, but familiar. It was the man who had spoken to them through the radio and, now he thought about it, the man who had held the camera in his vision. He looked to the source of the voice and a white sheet of paper appeared on the table. It was just as old as the books in the Master's room, but the hand was shaky and even harder to make out.

_"'If the * rumbles on a year without the ceremony, a Kusabi is needed. A Kusabi is an outsider, made into a Buddha and offered to the *. The more they suffer, the greater the calming of the *.' _

_Is that why I was brought to this village? At this rate, it will be me. I will become the Kusabi of the Crimson Sacrifice Ritual. That's why I am being kept in this house, why no one is speaking to me. Perhaps I should use the key the young sisters gave me and escape. But then... I will never see that place. If I become the Kusabi, I will see the land of the dead. The place that must not be seen. The ritual that must not be seen. If I stay, I will see it all._

_It's too late now. The maid found out that I had the key and she took it from me. It's too late for me now. I will see it all. At last, my research can be completed."_

Shaking his head in amazement, he put the paper carefully back down. Was this man sacrificed, just so he could see the forbidden place? Yugi had heard of, and even met, scientists who went to extreme measures to obtain knowledge, but even this was going too far.

_Munakata!_

He span round. The man was standing there! It was the man from his vision, aged and wise, standing before the bookcase, smiling with relief at Yugi. Yugi daren't move. The man was pure white and he could see right through him.

_That was quick... Did you find Itsuki? _

And with that, he vanished.

Taking several deep breaths, Yugi waited for his pounding heart to settle again and his panting lungs took in the mildew of rot of the house as the room slowly became very cold.

"The door, Yugi."

Forcing himself to turn away from the bookcase, fearing that the apparition wasn't completely gone, he looked at the door and pulled at the handle. Locked.

He sighed, almost with relief for an excuse to leave that room. "Let's go. There's nothing else here.

But as they left, he couldn't help glancing back at the bookcase before he closed the door.

* * *

Thankfully, by the time they reached the fireplace hall again, the laughing woman had disappeared, along with her misty pet and the room was clear, though an uneasiness still hung about the room.

The dirt corridor on the other side was another matter.

The moment he stepped out of the door, Yugi was met with the sight of blood. Smeared across the walls, splashed across the floor, its coppery smell filling his nostrils and its thick, sludgy surface clinging to his boots. It was enough to make him gag and he walked shakily along the corridor with his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide as he followed the scarlet trail. When he saw it veer off around a corner, he ignored it and carried straight on, remembering the bloody door he had seen there last time.

Then a creeping coldness spread up the corridor from behind him. He stopped. The presence within this piercing cold was growing stronger, stronger. Somewhere behind him, he heard a shuffling of fabric, a squelching noise as it slid along the blood-stained floor, almost as if something was being dragged...

Slowly, almost dreading what he would see, he began to turn. His eyes refused to look, though his head was turning itself and it became colder and colder. At last, he forced his eyes to look at it.

Nothing. The corridor was empty and even the blood had disappeared.

Sighing a misty breath, he turned back to the path.

And looked straight into a slashed, bloody face, screaming into his own.

_My... arms! _

Yugi staggered back. The woman's grey face was fixed in a scream of pain, and he couldn't blame her. The sleeved of her black kimono were empty and the torn edges at the top showed the empty sockets where her arms had once been, gushing blood in torrents that splashed onto the floor.

Those blank eyes, the hideous gashes... He had seen it before, one night in Domino, and whatever killed her must have killed -

_My... arms! _

Suddenly, she ducked down and flew at him, headbutting him in the stomach. A sharp pain and an agonising cold spread through his torso and he fell to the ground, his hands and back getting covered in blood. As the woman pulled herself back up, a long gasp, thick with the congealed blood in her throat and deep suffering she was in, reverberated across the walls and struck Yugi's heart, freezing him in place as she approached again.

An even louder gasp escaped her as a golden symbol appeared on his head and she was thrust back by a strong wave of power. The cold in the atmosphere diminished at once and Yami got to his feet, watching the cowering spirit before him.

Then, with a pained, angry scowl on her face, she leapt up one last time. Yami saw her white eyes and the blood streaking across her face before she faded into the light. In a moment, the light and the ghost had disappeared and the sound of clattering iron rang through the hallway as something fell to the ground.

Yami picked it up, wiping away the blood and saw a bronze key resting in his palm. "I guess we know what happened to the outsider's key now."

_[Forget that! What happened to her!?]_

_[Exactly what happened to all those other people in the hall. Sae.]_

The entrance hall was empty and the few papers that had fallen from the Master's room proved to be fruitless, too faded to even make a guess what they had said. Yami stood up from examining them and looked around. "Where to now?"

"Mio's in here somewhere. I know it! We have to find her before that woman or the armless maid do. But... this house is huge. Where do we look now?"

"I'm guessing there."

Yugi followed the Pharaoh's eye and jumped when he saw the white figure of a spirit peering at them from behind the opposite door. Smiling, Yami cocked his head slightly and the door opened to reveal a little girl, grinning playfully at him. Then she faded as the door swung wide open.

"So... we follow her?" Yugi asked. "And you're sure we can trust her?"

"Have you never heard the expression, 'out of the mouths of babes'?"

"Yeah, but they don't usually mean ghost babes in a evil village."

Yami smiled, but followed the ghost anyway. The sound of the child's giggling led them into a long corridor, dregs of old grey cloth hanging from the ceiling and blocking his line of view so he could only see a few metres at a time. Still, urged on by the child, he pressed on, ignoring the wide set of doors to his left as he went; the child did not go there. At last, they reached the end of the hall and a small wooden door, which, to his dismay, was locked.

"Now what?"

His question was answered as something tugged persistently at his sleeve. Looking down, he realised he was still holding the key from the armless ghost. Would that work? Slotting the key in, he turned it hopefully, hearing the tumblers fall in the lock and smiled as the door opened a crack.

Relenting to his partner, once he was sure he was calm enough, Yami retreated to the back of Yugi's mind, allowing him to step through the door. There was nothing unremarkable on the other side, just what looked like a sort of den, with a single table set up and a few cushions around a lantern and what looked like a very old set of mahjong. For a moment, he was disappointed, before he turned slightly and saw something of greater interest. A set of brown doors stood on the far side of the room, with two small window hatches open about halfway down, though there was no need for them; one of the doors were wide open and revealed another half of the room that would have otherwise been concealed. It was much more elaborate than the dull room behind him, filled with bookcases and scrolls hanging from the walls that looked much better cared for than any of the others in the rest of the house, but there was just one problem: the room in question was inside a cage. The whole part of the room was divided, not only by the wooden doors, but by the criss-crossed wooden bars and one locked door, just big enough for him to crawl through, on the front. Approaching the cage, he groaned in annoyance. The books inside looked like a better source of information than the Master's, if only he could get inside -

He stopped as something stirred behind the bars.

"Everyone's dead..."

"Mio?"

She was sitting there, crouched over something on the ground, her face illuminated by the lamp on the low desk beside her. Watching her face, Yugi's heart fell at the look of deep sadness in her eyes and tugging at her mouth.

"She didn't really want to run... she wanted to stay..."

"Mio!" She didn't move, didn't acknowledge him in any way. He grabbed the handle of the small door, but it didn't even budge and two ornate locks glared up at him. Above each one was a Japanese symbol: 'light' and 'shadow'.

"Keys... okay, this again." He nodded, getting back up to his feet and looking in at Mio. "Don't worry, I'll get you out. Just give me a minute!"

He turned and walked out through the brown doors, but the sound that reached his ears from the cell made him stop.

Mio was laughing, the same strange delirious laughter as the woman in the bloody kimono...

"Go ahead!" she shrieked. "Everyone's.... died!" The last of her rant ended in a shuddering sob that made Yugi turn sharply around. Mio was still sitting there and her expression hadn't changed at all.

Slowly, he approached the cell again. "Mio?" He shook his head. "I'll get you out. Don't go anywhere."

He turned and ran out of the room, only then realising what a stupid thing to say that had been.

_What do we do?_ he thought desperately as he ran back along the corridor, swiping aside the cloths as he went. _Where will we find the keys?_

As he reached the wooden doors, he drew to a sudden halt. The man in black robes stood before him, staring up at the double doors with a grieving expression on his old face. Watching him as he stood there, as though he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself, Yugi almost felt sorry for the man. As he walked forward and disappeared through the doors, he heard the man's weary voice mutter -

_Accept your fate and become the sacrifice... Yae..._

As though waiting for this cue, the doors clicked and groaned as they slowly eased open. Yugi blinked hard as he stared into the room beyond and saw millions of tiny red lights shimmering against the darkness and for a moment, he thought that the room had been filled with butterflies. However, as he stepped through and let the doors swing shut, he saw that the lights were red paper lanterns covering the walls around him. A small shrine sat in the centre of the room; stone tablets bearing the names of the family's predecessors rested on the table, whilst a sacred rope closed off the shrine and the offering table, where another small mirror sat glistening as it reflected the red spots of light.

Staring at the mirror, Yugi started to cross the room, but his foot kicked against something and a small white book slid a few feet away from him. His eyes widened as he bent down to pick it up, for he saw that the front was also covered in red butterflies. Though it was quite a thick book, a sort of fabric diary, most of the pages had been torn out and only a few entries remained.

_"I was wrong. It's just like Itsuki said. Munakata's teacher is going to be a *. This has to stop! People like Mutsuki shouldn't have to die! I have to do something! _

_Yae. _

_"It seems father plans to make that man a *. Even though he's Munakata's teacher! To keep the * appeased, there's only one thing to do. If we perform the Crimson Sacrifice, perhaps people won't suffer like this... _

_Sae._

Yugi stared at the page for several moments, trying to figure it out. Finally, he said, "One diary between two people? That's being economical, huh?" As he flipped the book closed, some strange weight dragged down the back cover and something slipped from its bindings to land with a clatter on the floor. It was a key, pitch black and engraved with a white symbol on the top: 'shadow'.

"Yes!" Yugi's heart leapt with excitement as he stooped to get it and -

_The man was there, the one from his vision. _

_"Did you find Itsuki?"_

_Except... _

_Blood was pouring from him. High above a strange chamber, the man was tied up by ropes tightly wound around his body and pulled so taut they held him suspended in the air. Cuts and gashes covered his skin and he looked weak and strangely calm as his own blood fell to the stone table far beneath him, where a gathering of priests were chanting prayers to his wounded, dying body. _

He blinked and saw the key again on the ground. Picking it up hastily, he looked around the room for any other clues and, seeing none, ran to the door on the other side. Once through, he leaned against it, panting for several minutes. He was still holding the butterfly diary.

* * *

Author's Note: Happy New Year! Sorry about the long wait, but my internet access back home is kind of scarce at the moment. We've started badgering my dad for broadband, and hopefully we'll get lucky. Hope everyone had a good Xmas. I spend mine eating in cheap restaurants and generally being lazy! Loved it!

Please leave a review, even if you're only stopping a moment! It makes me feel popular! (how sad...)

xx


	12. No Escape

**Chapter 12 - No Escape **

It didn't take him long to find the second key. The corridor he had fled into was very short, leading only to a caged wall with a scarlet room beyond and on the floor before it were a few yellowing sheets of paper. Still shaken from his vision, he staggered forward and reached out gently to pick them up and his eyes widened when he saw that they were the same colour as the pages of the butterfly diary in his hand. Flipping open the cover, he placed the loose pages inside, matching them up to the diary entry already there, then began to read it.

_"The time of the ritual is coming soon. Itsuki and Mutsuki's ritual didn't work, and this year it's our turn. I'm leaving the village with you. Itsuki will help us escape, and we'll be together forever, like I promised. _

_Yae. _

_"The truth is, I don't want to run. But as long as I can be with you, I'll follow you anywhere. Just don't leave me here all alone. _

_Sae."_

"Sae and this other girl, Yae...." he muttered. "How come their names are almost the same? Do you think that they named them that way because they were meant to perform the ritual together? So I guess, they were sacrificed."

"Unless they managed to run away," said Yami. "It says that Itsuki was meant to help them."

"But he couldn't help them locked up in that storehouse!"

"In any case, we were too late to save Sae."

Yugi sighed miserably. "I guess... but we'd have been too late anyway. This all happened years ago. What happened to her?" He looked down at the faded page. "And where is Yae?" Looking up to the caged wall, he frowned curiously. "Isn't that..." He stepped up to the wall and peered through the wooden bars. "It's the Master's room!"

The room had not changed since they had been in there, so he couldn't understand why he felt the need to look at it again, studying it from this new angle. As he peered through the wooden cage his eyes caught something shimmering, stuck between the bars. He struggled for a moment to get his hand in the tiny gap and edge the item out, but after a while, the thing fell out and landed on the floor. It was the Light Key.

"Yes!" He scooped it up and held it up with the Shadow Key. "I hope Mio's okay."

"Well, let's not keep her waiting any longer."

Yugi practically raced back through the red lights of the shrine and back to the den. Somehow, the big brown door had swung shut since he left, but his excitement and urgency was so great that he had no problem pulling it open again.

"Mio! I've got the keys, just wait a sec -"

But the cage was empty. No, she must just be hiding behind the bookcase. Fumbling with the keys, Yugi finally clicked open the two locks and pushed open the tiny door, crouching down as he hurried through. He looked straight away at the place where Mio had been kneeling when he last saw her, but there was nothing there except a little china doll dressed in a scarlet kimono lying on its back before a small desk. Checking the bookcases, he found that they too were empty.

Yugi shouted in frustration. "This doesn't make any sense! How did she get out of here!?"

"Yugi..."

He looked around at Yami, who raised his eyebrows pointedly at the wall. Over the desk, scratched hurriedly into the wall was the word

_Run_

and beneath that

_Are you leaving me alone again? _

"Run?" Yugi muttered and the moment he said it, the room began to spin. Gasping, he fell back, reaching out for something to get his balance back as the room moved faster and faster and somewhere, the sound of chanting echoed through the shifting walls. Then, his dizzying eyes caught sight of the doll on the floor. It wasn't moving at all.

Then it changed, the red clothes faded to brown and suddenly, Mio was lying on the ground. Yugi lunged forward, before he saw the great shadow on top of her, its long, spindly arms reaching down to her, its fingers wrapped around her neck...

"Mio!"

The shadow shifted and looked up at him. Yugi gasped in horror and fell back.

He cried out as his back collided painfully with the bookcase and the room stopped. The doll lay silently on the ground, untouched, and the room itself betrayed nothing of what had just happened.

Gasping in his every breath, Yugi wiped the sweat from his brow with a trembling hand. "Mio... did something happen to you in here?"

A loud bang made him jump back and spinning round he stared at the bookcase as a heavy book fell to the floor. It landed on its spine and fell open at his feet, revealing a scrap of loose paper hidden inside. It was in the same, unsteady hand as the one in the room upstairs.

_"As expected, the jailer won't tell me anything, won't even say a word. It's a total reversal of the treatment I got when I came to the village. I guess this was the real reason I was invited to the village. The cell is also used to store documents. I was able to find several important manuscripts. I can continue my research, but I doubt anyone will ever see it. _

_~Hellish Abyss~_

_It is unclear how long this hole that connects our world to the underworld has existed. They say that if the cover to it is opened, it will cause a terrible disaster. This is the origin of the 'gate of hell' folktale. As a taboo word, it is often represented in other texts as *. The suffering of the sacrifice is used to seal the Hellish Abyss._

_~ The Mourners~ _

_They are the guardians of the Hellish Abyss, and the only ones that can get near it. When the year of the ceremony comes, the Mourners sew their eyes shut so they cannot glimpse the Hellish Abyss. Criminals and anyone that has seen the Helish Abyss are also forced to become Mourners. Afterwards, they live underground, never returning to the surface. What can be so bad that looking at it is forbidden?"_

Yugi stopped reading, his mind flashing back to the mirror in the shrine, that had showed him that strange man before the pit. That man had covered his eyes; was he one of these Mourners? Then... the pit he had almost looked into...

Shaking his head, he read on.

_"The day of the ritual is almost here. The shrine maidens came and gave me another key. Today I kept staring out of my cell towards the corridor, thinking of my escape. They told me that the passage leads to the basement and through there, I could leave through the side door of the house. If not for the fact that the cell itself is now locked, I could easily escape, but now it is no use."_

Closing the book on the papers, Yugi went to put the book back on the shelf, but as he did, he saw something at the back of the shelf, poking out from the empty space. Reaching in, he pulled out a long stone slab, like the ones that had opened the front gates of Kurosawa.

"Will this... open that door?"

Yugi didn't know what to expect when he opened the door into the basement. It was far too old for any food to be down there, and he didn't think there would be that much storage down here in such a big house with so many rooms, so anything could have been waiting for him down there.

What he didn't expect to find was the well.

It's round stone wall jutted out of the middle of the earthy ground, looking completely out of place surrounded by the tall walls and the low ceiling. For some reason, its presence made him uneasy, especially as he stared down into the dark pit, wondering vaguely if there was still any water down there. The longer he stared, the deeper his gaze fell into the darkness, listening as a low moaning echoed up from somewhere beyond...

"Yugi." He pulled his gaze out and looked at Yami. He was pointing across the basement to a small set of stairs leading to a passageway above.

"Could that be... the way out?"

"The way that the outsider should have taken."

_To sate the appetite of The Malice... _

Yugi span around and was met with the skeletal gaze of the Master, dressed in heavy black robes and a tall priests hat.

_... the outsider must be sacrificed!_

"Okay! This time I'm pretty sure he means me!"

He was right. A dim light shone in the empty sockets of the Master's eyes and suddenly, in a white flash, something swung round and knocked Yugi across the room. Ignoring the Pharaoh's warning cry, he looked up to where the spectre was recovering from the swing and looking towards him again. Sitting there in shock, it took Yugi a moment to realise something warm and wet was spreading across his chest, but he had little time to think about it when the Master threw his sharp staff across the room and Yugi had to roll out of the way as it hit the wall with a clash.

His chest was stinging now. He looked down and to his horror saw that his white shirt was slowly being stained crimson from a deep tear across his front.

"Dammit!" He barely had time to react as the staff struck him across the face. White sparks burst in front of his eyes as he fell to the ground, his cheek burning and his chest growing more painful.

When he looked up warily again, the Master had vanished, but Yugi could still hear his voice resonating from the walls. It was then he realised, to his horror, that he was not holding the camera.

Panicking, his eyes darted around the basement. "Where is it!?" It was impossible to see in this dim light. He looked up sharply and dodged another attack. The Master's face... one moment it seemed almost human, and terribly sad... then it shifted again, to the skeleton grin that watched Yugi hungrily, its staff held above his head.

There!

Yugi lunged forward, underneath the arm of the Master as it swiped at him and ran to the well, scooping up the camera with his right hand. Before the spectre could recover from the sudden move, Yugi had turned on the spot and aimed the camera at him. As if waiting for him, the runes lit up gold.

FLASH!

The Master barely flinched, though spots of energy flew towards the camera. Yugi took a hesitant step back as the Master vanished. His leg hit against the well and he turned around.

The Master was there, hovering above the well, his staff raised as his skeletal mouth gave an anguished cry. Yugi raised the camera and the runes glowed red.

FLASH!

With a burst of blue light, the Master seized up and then slumped, falling into the darkness of the well.

_We should have let them both leave... _

Yugi collapsed to the ground with a sigh of relief. His body was on fire, the gashes on his arms and chest pulsing with pain and he trembled as he sat there, letting the camera slip from his weak grasp.

"Yugi, are you alright?"

"F-Fine... just give me a minute."

"You're badly wounded..." Yugi felt the Pharaoh's incorporeal hand on his shoulder. "Let me take over for now, until you've recovered."

"But these wounds will be on you too!"

Yami smiled. "I'll be able to handle it. My shadow powers will help them to heal more quickly."

Sighing, Yugi nodded and retreated to his inner mind, allowing Yami to step forward. Picking up the camera again, the Pharaoh got to his feet and winced a little as he felt the pain across his chest. It must have been excruciating for Yugi, but he could see that the cut was already beginning to heal faster than it normally would have. Taking the stone slab from his pocket, he made his way past the well, ignoring the low moans resonating from within, and approached the set of stairs, dimly lit by a single candle, that led up to a door. As expected, there was a slot in the side of the door and the stone slab fitted easily, turning in the lock to the sound of the falling tumbler.

The door led straight out to the front courtyard and Yami could see the high gates through the dense mist. This time, however, the woman in the white kimono, the ill-fated Sae, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Mio.

"What now?" he wondered.

_[Maybe we should go and talk to Itsuki again.]_ Yugi replied. _[He might know what to do.]_

Yami nodded his agreement. But before he had taken a step towards the gate, his lungs seized and he struggled to breath against the sudden pain. A moment later, everything went white.

* * *

_Mio was there, limping as she made her way determinedly across the bridge. The world was strangely surreal as she made her way back into the village, guided by several crimson butterflies. Her eyes were filled with sadness and she stopped just outside the gates, the butterflies hovering curiously around her, as if asking her what was wrong. _

_She looked up to the house in front of her. "The twin's house..." she muttered. "Over the bridge..." _

_Hesitantly, she rounded the corner and gazed up at the bridge between the two houses. A woman was walking calmly across it, her long black hair covering her face. It was odd, wrong somehow, the way her head hung..._

_"A locked house, connected by heaven and earth..." _

_The butterflies shimmered ahead of her, on the path leading away from the houses, and she followed obediently as they called out to her. Around the corner, they waited patiently, fluttering around the woman in the blood-stained kimono. _

_"I have to meet him... Say I'm sorry..."

* * *

  
_


	13. The First Twin: Kiryu

**Chapter 13 - The First Twin: Kiryu **

The bridge was empty. Yami sighed with relief at this, half-expecting to see the apparition that had grabbed hold of Yugi on the way over to the house, but there was nothing as he made his way onto the creaking wood, his eyes on the gate in the distance.

Groaning, he gripped the bridge of his nose, trying to ease his aching head. The vision had left him stunned and trembling for several minutes as he tried to get his breath back, wondering what he had seen and why. Still, it had told him two things; Mio had gone to the Twin Houses and she was in great danger. He had seen it. The bloody figure of Sae had been waiting for her, and Yami was fairly certain she wouldn't be able to fight off her Kusabi a second time.

The Kusabi...

He remembered the pale, misty spectre, bound in ropes with its mouth wide open, as though screaming in pain. The records in the house said that the Kusabi was made through a ritual. What sort of ritual? There were too many references to sacrifice and Yami was more than certain that somehow, one of these rituals had gone wrong. After all, he knew from experience that the dead held a terrible grudge when it suited them, enough to affect even the living and perhaps that was what had happened here. A sacrifice was angry because of its fate and retaliated. And the result was right in front of them.

Still... there was too much yet to be answered. As Yugi had said, he was interested to learn the fate of Yae and why her ghost did not haunt the village as Sae's did.

_We promised..._

Yami looked up sharply. She was standing there at the end of the bridge, pushing against the gates.

"Mio!"

He ran the last few feet of the bridge, just as it began to slide shut again. Slipping through just before they closed, Yami looked up and saw Mio disappear round the corner, going the same way she had in his vision. Ignoring the groan of the gates as they closed on him, he ran down the path, following her between the houses.

_It's our fault... _

"Mio! Wait! Sae's there, don't go!"

But she wouldn't listen. Walking as though in a daze, she disappeared around the corner and when Yami turned to follow her, she had gone. Determined he would not lose her again, he ran up the alley towards a glowing red lantern. At the cross-roads, he looked around, trying to catch a glimpse of the limping girl.

_We shouldn't have run away..._

Yami turned around, trying to see where her voice had come from, but all he saw was a pair of double doors. Frowning, he looked at the huge house, following with his eyes its 'L' shaped design, realising with a start that it led around the corner to where the bridge was.

"So... this is one of the Twin Houses."

"And Mio's inside..."

Yami nodded, walking up to the door, but as soon as he held out his hand, a blue light began to glow over it, hissing and moaning. Frowning, he looked down at the camera in his hand.

"Another seal for the camera to break. You should take over, Yugi."

"Sure."

The camera was raised as Yugi took control, his wide, innocent eyes looking through the lens that seemed to increase the bright glow of the door and he drew a sharp breath as he began to see the outlines of faces in the light, screaming and crying with wide, dark eyes. He took the picture, expecting the light to fade, but instead it shifted and showed him something within the camera. It looked like... a stone well, derelict and useless.

"Oh, no. Please tell me that's not the well in the Kurosawa basement."

"It looked like it was at the side of a building, so I don't think it can be that one," Yami replied.

"Well, let's start looking. Maybe we can ask Itsuki about it!"

"Maybe. Let's go and see him."

But when they arrived at the storehouse, the faint light above the door had gone out, leaving the whole area in darkness. Yugi turned on his torch and shone it at the small garden door, but to his dismay, it was locked.

"What?" He pulled the handle, almost ripping it clean off. "Itsuki! Can you hear me? Itsuki!" No answer. Sighing, he let go of the handle. "What's going on here? He must hear us, it's not that big a place. And who locked the door?"

Getting to his feet, he kicked the door in annoyance. He already had a pounding headache and this wasn't helping at all, when he knew that the only person who could help them was on the other side of that gate. For a moment, he was almost angry at Itsuki, as though it was his fault he was locked in, before he guiltily chided himself and walked away from the storehouse.

A sharp pain surged through his aching skull and he stopped in his tracks, gripping his temples so hard he dropped the torch. After a moment, the pain subsided and he reached down to pick up the torch, looking briefly at the place where the beam of light fell.

His heart almost left his chest. It was the well. Sitting at the side of the storehouse, covered in broken beams and debris, it was exactly how it had looked in the photo and the shimmer of blue hovering over it told Yugi that he had found the right place.

He took the picture and at once his headache was eased as the light vanished.

Smiling proudly, he stood a few minutes later before the door of the Twins Houses. Struggling to think back to the conversation he had had with Mio, he was fairly sure that this was the place she had called Kiryu House. Slowly, he pushed open the door and peered into the darkness.

"Mio?"

Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the light from the few candles and he saw the tattered entrance hall, strewn with storage pots and grungy tatami mats and faded screens. The partition wall of the next room was so damaged that it was easy to see straight into it and as he stepped up off the dirt pit, he saw that the wall along the corridor had been ripped completely open. Ignoring the door a little further on, he stepped tentatively through the broken wall.

Yugi's eyes widened in shock. This was too surreal.

The room was filled with little china dolls, hanging by their necks from little ropes that dangled from the ceiling. A few had fallen down and they lay on the ground, staring up at Yugi with blank eyes and chipped faces. Side-stepping to avoid coming too close to the grisly display, he made his way across the room to the opposite door.

As he turned, a life-sized doll stood in front of him.

He leapt back in shock, straight into the hanging dolls. Crying out in panic as he tried to swipe at the things as they knocked together, get them out of his face, he dropped to his knees, escaping them completely and looking across at the doll that had startled him.

It was not a doll. It was just a small girl, dressed in a purple kimono. He had only thought that she was a doll because of the long black hair that fell around her shoulders and covered her eyes, just as it did on all the dolls above him. She was very pale and didn't move, keeping her eyes to the ground.

"Um..." But he couldn't think what to say. What could he say to this girl? She was dead.

_Why do you kill? _

Then she was gone.

Yugi sat there, stunned for a few moments, before he crawled out from underneath the dolls, determined he should not get his head stuck among them again. Behind the place where the girl had stood was a door, so uncertainly getting to his feet again, he made his way across to it.

The moment his hand touched the handle, a blinding pain seared through his head and as everything turned white, he caught a glimpse of

_the bridge between the houses and briefly, he saw Mio crossing to the other side, opening the door and slipping through -_

Panting, a cold sweat lacing his forehead, he pulled himself back to the present moment and, more determined than ever, he opened the door.

The corridor beyond was in even worse a state than the doll room. The partition walls were crumbling, the oil paintings and sutras along the walls were faded and covered in mould, pots and urns lay in broken fragments all over the floor and the only door that wasn't so damaged it could actually be opened led into a room that was all but empty except for the small shrine in the corner. Curious, Yugi approached to examine it, but the names were scratched out and only a single, blank piece of paper sat in front of the offerings. As he picked up the paper, he was hit by another pounding headache. What was wrong? Did it want him to take a picture of the shrine? Trying to ignore the pain, he held up the camera, looking for the blue shine on the altar. Nothing.

A small sigh sounded behind him and, the camera still held to his eyes, he turned around.

This time he saw it. The walls around him had changed, covered in thick, fresh black paint that scrawled out the words

_why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill? why_

over and over and over again. The walls were covered with it, yet when he took the camera away, the room was completely blank and empty again. Not wanting to wait for something to happen, aware of the hidden marks glaring down at him from within the walls, he ran for the door and slammed it shut behind him.

Along the corridor, he found another room, more pleasant than the one he had just come from. It looked better preserved than the rest of the house and smelled faintly of recently burned incense and perfume. The room was decorated with red curtains that draped across the window-less room and small red cushions sat in front of what looked like a shrine, with a pretty oil painting on the wall behind it. At first, Yugi thought that it might be a woman's room, but there were more dolls in here, smaller and less frightening than the ones from before and when he saw the small purple kimono hanging on the other side of the room, he realised this place belonged to the little girl.

But there were two cushions...

The light of his torch was almost unnecessary, since the room was quite well lit by two lanterns sitting on the floor and he saw that beside one of them was a small notebook. Approaching the altar, he became wary of kneeling down in the place between the cushions to pick up the book. He could feel some presence lurking there on either side of him... kneeling down on the cushions...

He grabbed up the book and leapt back, glaring at the altar, daring it to do something. But nothing happened. Sighing, he looked down at the book in his hand and flipped it open.

_"Akane has become a Remaining. To comfort her, I'll make a doll that looks like Azami. She has been emotionless since the day of the ritual. I'll make the doll look exactly like Azami, so that when they are together, no one will be able to tell them apart." _

There was something calm and decided in the writer's hand, but as Yugi turned the page, the writing became more worried, as though the hand of the one who wrote it had been trembling at the time.

_"Akane never leaves Azami's side for even a second, always whispering things to her. I don't know what she says, but at least she seems to be slowly returning to her former self. _

_"If we didn't have this ritual, Azami wouldn't have become a butterfly, and Akane wouldn't have lost her spirit." _

"Weird," he muttered, flitting through the rest of the pages. "But if this guy made dolls, I guess that's what all those dolls in the other room were for."

Leaving the book on the side, he turned to try the other door, but for some reason it wouldn't open, though there was no sign of any lock. As he tugged on the handle again, the presence he had felt before became stronger. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up as he sensed the unmistakable feeling of someone staring at him... no, more than one person... from that altar.

Turning around... he found the room to be empty.

Yugi stared. The charming little room had suddenly become more sinister in his eyes and he was as glad to leave it as he had been to leave the shrine room.

The other doors that hadn't opened for him, he noticed, also didn't have any locks. Something was sealing them, but it wasn't the blue haze he had seen Mio conjure up. So what was it? The only other door that would open for him led up a set of stairs. At the top were more empty rooms, filled with broken remnants of days long since gone, and a single door, leading to...

The bridge, leading to the other door where Mio had entered... Yugi ran up to it and grabbed the handle, but it was no use. It was tightly locked.

Suddenly, something banged against the door. Yugi pulled his hands away, staring at the frame and listening as the banging continued.

"Yugi! Are you out there!?"

"Mio!" He grabbed the handle again and pulled it as she pushed from the other side. "It won't! It won't open!"

A frightened gasp sounded through the wood. "She's holding it shut!" her muffled voice shouted. "I can't get it open!"

He stepped back from the door, looking up and down the wall, back down to the ruined front door in the street below. "Isn't there another way in?"

"Yes... You have to come underground. There's a tunnel..."

"Okay! I'll be with you in a sec, Mio! Just hold on!"

He took another step back and turned to the other door.

_It hurts..._

Yugi froze in horror. For a moment, he was seized with an indescribable disgust and almost leaned over the banister and threw up. The woman before him had a pretty face, but deathly pale and the skin of her neck was twisted and swollen as her head hung down at an unnatural angle on her shoulder, swinging back and forth. She slowly drifted towards him, the sound of broken bone and cartilage filling the air as she tried to pull her broken neck back into place.

* * *

Author's Note: Hey-hey! Two chappies in one day, how's that for a slice of fried gold? Just so you know, Broken Neck Lady is one of the freakiest ghosts in the whole game. Between her and the ghost that crawls around like a spider, I hardly get any sleep from playing these games!

Ta-ra! xx


End file.
